The Gods Are Athirst

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THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE
IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN

The Gods Are Athirst

The Gods Are Athirst

BY ANATOLE FRANCE

LONDON : JOHN LANK, THE BODLF.Y HEAD

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN. MCMXIII

Copyright, 1913, by
JOHN LANE COMPANY

Publishers Printing Company, New York, U. S. A.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

I

VARISTE GAMELIN, painter, pupil
of David, member of the Section du
Pont-Neuf, formerly Section Henri
IV, had betaken himself at an early
hour in the morning to the old church
of the Barnabites, which for three
years, since 21st May 1790, had
served as meeting-place for the General Assembly of
the Section. The church stood in a narrow, gloomy
square, not far from the gates of the Palais de Justice.
On the facade, which consisted of two of the Clas-
sical orders superimposed and was decorated with
inverted brackets and flaming urns, blackened by
the weather and disfigured by the hand of man, the
religious emblems had been battered to pieces, while
above the doorway had been inscribed in black
letters the Republican catchword of “Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity or Death. ” Evariste Gamelin
made his way into the nave; the same vaults which
had heard the surpliced clerks of the Congregation
of St. Paul sing the divine offices, now looked down
on red-capped patriots assembled to elect the Muni-
cipal magistrates and deliberate on the affairs of the
Section. The Saints had been dragged from their
niches and replaced by the busts of Brutus, Jean-
Jacques and Le Peltier. The altar had been stripped
bare and was surmounted by the Table of the Rights
of Man.

1

a

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

It was here in the nave that twice a week, from
five in the evening to eleven, were held the public
assemblies. The pulpit, decorated with the colours
of the Nation, served as tribune for the speakers
who harangued the meeting. Opposite, on the
Epistle side, rose a platform of rough planks, for
the accommodation of the women and children,
who attended these gatherings in considerable
numbers.

On this particular morning, facing a desk planted
underneath the pulpit, sat in red cap and carma-
gnole complete the joiner from the Place Thionville,
the citoyen Dupont senior, one of the twelve forming
the Committee of Surveillance. On the desk stood
a bottle and glasses, an ink-horn, and a folio con-
taining the text of the petition urging the Conven-
tion to expel from its bosom the twenty-two mem-
bers deemed unworthy.

Evariste Gamelin took the pen and signed.

“I was sure,” said the carpenter and magistrate,
“I was sure you would come and give in your name,
citoyen Gamelin. You are the real thing. But the
Section is lukewarm; it is lacking in virtue. I have
proposed to the Committee of Surveillance to de-
liver no certificate of citizenship to any one who has
failed to sign the petition.”

“I am ready to sign with my blood,” said Game-
lin, “for the proscription of these federalists, these
traitors. They have desired the death of Marat:
let them perish.”

“What ruins us,” replied Dupont senior, “is in-
differentism. In a Section which contains nine
hundred citizens with the right to vote there are
not fifty attend the assembly. Yesterday we were
eight and twenty.”

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

3

“Well then,” said Gamelin, “citizens must be
obliged to come under penalty of a fine.”

“Oh, hoi” exclaimed the joiner frowning, “but
if they all came, the patriots would be in a minor-
ity. . . . Citoyen Gamelin, will you drink a glass of
wine to the health of all good sansculottes? . . .”

On the wall of the church, on the Gospel side,
could be read the words, accompanied by a black
hand, the forefinger pointing to the passage leading
to the cloisters : “ Comite civil , Comite de surveillance.
Comite de bienfaisance. A few yards further on,
you came to the door of the erstwhile sacristy, over
which was inscribed : Comite militaire.

Gamelin pushed this door open and found the
Secretary of the Committee within; he was writing
at a large table loaded with books, papers, steel
ingots, cartridges and samples of saltpetre-bearing
soils.

“Greeting, citoyen Trubert. How are you?”

“I? ... I am perfectly well.”

The Secretary of the Military Committee, For-
tune Trubert, invariably made this same reply to
all who troubled about his health, less by way of
informing them of his welfare than to cut short any
discussion on the subject. At twenty-eight, he had
a parched skin, thin hair, hectic cheeks and bent
shoulders. He was an optician on the Quai des
Orfevres, and owned a very old house which he had
given up in ’91 to a superannuated clerk in order to
devote his energies to the discharge of his municipal
duties. His mother, a charming woman, whose
memory a few old men of the neighbourhood still
cherished fondly, had died at twenty; she had left
him her fine eyes, full of gentleness and passion, her
pallor and timidity. From his father, optician and

2 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

It was here in the nave that twice a week, from
five in the evening to eleven, were held the public
assemblies. The pulpit, decorated with the colours
of the Nation, served as tribune for the speakers
who harangued the meeting. Opposite, on the
Epistle side, rose a platform of rough planks, for
the accommodation of the women and children,
who attended these gatherings in considerable
numbers.

On this particular morning, facing a desk planted
underneath the pulpit, sat in red cap and carmen
gnole complete the joiner from the Place Thionville,
the citoyen Dupont senior, one of the twelve forming
the Committee of Surveillance. On the desk stood
a bottle and glasses, an ink-horn, and a folio con-
taining the text of the petition urging the Conven-
tion to expel from its bosom the twenty-two mem-
bers deemed unworthy.

Evariste Gamelin took the pen and signed.

“I was sure,” said the carpenter and magistrate,
“I was sure you would come and give in your name,
citoyen Gamelin. You are the real thing. But the
Section is lukewarm; it is lacking in virtue. I have
proposed to the Committee of Surveillance to de-
liver no certificate of citizenship to any one who has
failed to sign the petition.”

“I am ready to sign with my blood,” said Game-
lin, “for the proscription of these federalists, these
traitors. They have desired the death of Marat:
let them perish.”

“What ruins us,” replied Dupont senior, “is in-
differentism. In a Section which contains nine
hundred citizens with the right to vote there are
not fifty attend the assembly. Yesterday we were
eight and twenty.”

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

3

“Well then,” said Gamelin, “citizens must be
obliged to come under penalty of a fine.”

“Oh, hoi” exclaimed the joiner frowning, “but
if they all came, the patriots would be in a minor-
ity. . . . Citoyen Gamelin, will you drink a glass of
wine to the health of all good sansculottes ? . . .”

On the wall of the church, on the Gospel side,
could be read the words, accompanied by a black
hand, the forefinger pointing to the passage leading
to the cloisters: “Comite civil. Comite de surveillance.
Comite de bienfaisance. A few yards further on,
you came to the door of the erstwhile sacristy, over
which was inscribed : Comite militaire.

Gamelin pushed this door open and found the
Secretary of the Committee within; he was writing
at a large table loaded with books, papers, steel
ingots, cartridges and samples of saltpetre-bearing
soils.

“Greeting, citoyen Trubert. How are you?”

“I? ... I am perfectly well.”

The Secretary of the Military Committee, For-
tune Trubert, invariably made this same reply to
all who troubled about his health, less by way of
informing them of his welfare than to cut short any
discussion on the subject. At twenty-eight, he had
a parched skin, thin hair, hectic cheeks and bent
shoulders. He was an optician on the Quai des
Orfevres, and owned a very old house which he had
given up in ’91 to a superannuated clerk in order to
devote his energies to the discharge of his municipal
duties. His mother, a charming woman, whose
memory a few old men of the neighbourhood still
cherished fondly, had died at twenty; she had left
him her fine eyes, full of gentleness and passion, her
pallor and timidity. From his father, optician and

4

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

mathematical instrument maker to the King, car-
ried off by the same complaint before his thirtieth
year, he inherited an upright character and an in-
dustrious temperament.

Without stopping his writing:

“And you, citoyen,” he asked, “how are you?”

“Very well. Anything new?”

“Nothing, nothing. You can see, — we are all
quiet here.”

“And the situation?”

“The situation is just the same.”

The situation was appalling. The finest army of
the Republic blockaded in Mayence; Valenciennes
besieged; Fontenay taken by the Vendeens; Lyons
rebellious; the Cevennes in insurrection, the frontier
open to the Spaniards; two-thirds of the Depart-
ments invaded or revolted; Paris helpless before
the Austrian cannon, without money, without
bread !

Fortune Trubert wrote on calmly. The Sections
being instructed by resolution of the Commune to
carry out the levy of twelve thousand men for La
Vendee, he was drawing up directions relating to
the enrolment and arming of the contingent which
the “Pont-Neuf,” erstwhile “Henri IV,” was to
supply. All the muskets in store were to be handed
over to the men requisitioned for the front; the
National Guard of the Section would be armed with
fowling-pieces and pikes.

“I have brought you here,” said Gamelin, “the
schedule of the church-bells to be sent to the Luxem-
bourg to be converted into cannon.”

Evariste Gamelin, albeit he had not a penny, was
inscribed among the active members of the Section;
the law accorded this privilege only to such citizens

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

5

as were rich enough to pay a contribution equiva-
lent in amount to three days’ work, and demanded
a ten days’ contribution to qualify an elector for
office. But the Section du Pont-Neuf, enamoured
of equality and jealous of its independence, regarded
as qualified both for the vote and for office every
citizen who had paid out of his own pocket for his
National Guard’s uniform. This was Gamelin’s
case, who was an active citizen of his Section and
member of the Military Committee.

Fortune Trubert laid down his pen:

“Citoyen Evariste,” he said, “I beg you to go to
the Convention and ask them to send us orders to dig
up the floor of cellars, to wash the soil and flag-stones
and collect the saltpetre. It is not everything to
have guns, we must have gunpowder too.”

A little hunchback, a pen behind his ear and a
bundle of papers in his hand, entered the erstwhile
sacristy. It was the citoyen Beauvisage, of the
Committee of Surveillance.

“ Citoyens,” he announced, “we have bad news:
Custine has evacuated Landau.”

“Custine is a traitor!” cried Gamelin.

“He shall be guillotined,” said Beauvisage.

Trubert, in his rather breathless voice, expressed
himself with his habitual calmness:

“The Convention has not instituted a Committee
of Public Safety for fun. It will enquire into Cus-
tine’s conduct. Incompetent or traitor, he will be
superseded by a General resolved to win the vic-
tory, — and f a ira!”

He turned over a heap of papers, scrutinizing them
with his tired eyes:

“That our soldiers may do their duty with a
quiet mind and stout heart, they must be assured

6

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

that the lot of those they leave behind at home is
safeguarded. If you are of the same opinion, citoyen
Gamelin, you will join me in demanding, at the next
assembly, that the Committee of Benevolence con-
cert measures with the Military Committee to suc-
cour the families that are in indigence and have a
relative at the front.”

He smiled and hummed to himself: u Qa ira! ( a
ira! . .

Working twelve and fourteen hours a day at his
table of unpainted deal for the defence of the father-
land in peril, this humble Secretary of the Sectional
Committee could see no disproportion between the
immensity of the task and the meagreness of his
means for performing it, so filled was he with a sense
of the unity in a common effort between himself
and all other patriots, so intimately did he feel him-
self one with the Nation at large, so merged was his
individual life in the life of a great People. He was
of the sort who combine enthusiasm with long-suf-
fering, who, after each check, set about organizing
the victory that is impossible, but is bound to come.
And verily they must win the day. These men of
no account, who had destroyed Royalty and upset
the old order of things, this Trubert, a penniless
optician, this Evariste Gamelin, an unknown dauber,
could expect no mercy from their enemies. They
had no choice save between victory and death. Hence
both their fervour and their serenity.

n

|UITTING the Bamabites, fivariste
Gamelin set off in the direction of
the Place Dauphine, now renamed
the Place de Thionville in honour
of a city that had shown itself im-
pregnable.

Situated in the busiest quarter of
Paris, the Place had long lost the fine stateliness it
had worn a hundred years ago; the mansions form-
ing its three sides, built in the days of Henri IV in
one uniform style, of red brick with white stone
dressings, to lodge splendour-loving magistrates,
had had their imposing roofs of slate removed to
make way for two or three wretched storeys of lath
and plaster or had even been demolished altogether
and replaced by shabby whitewashed houses, and
now displayed only a series of irregular, poverty-
stricken, squalid fronts, pierced with countless
narrow, unevenly spaced windows enlivened with
flowers in pots, birdcages, and rags hanging out to
dry. These were occupied by a swarm of artisans,
jewellers, metal-workers, clockmakers, opticians,
printers, laundresses, sempstresses, milliners, and a
few grey-beard lawyers who had not been swept
away in the storm of revolution along with the King’s
courts.

It was morning and springtime. Golden sun-
beams, intoxicating as new wine, played on the
walls and flashed gaily in at garret casements.

7

8

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

Every sash of every window was thrown open, show-
ing the housewives’ frowsy heads peeping out. The
Clerk of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who had just
left his house on his way to Court, distributed ami-
cable taps on the cheeks of the children playing under
the trees. From the Pont-Neuf came the crier’s
voice denouncing the treason of the infamous
Dumouriez.

Evariste Gamelin lived in a house on the side
towards the Quai de l’Horloge, a house that dated
from Henri IV and would still have preserved a not
unhandsome appearance but for a mean tiled attic
that had been added on to heighten the building
under the last but one of the tyrants. To adapt the
lodging of some erstwhile dignitary of the Parlement
to the exigencies of the bourgeois and artisan house-
holds that formed its present denizens, endless par-
titions and false floors had been run up. This was
why the citoyen Remade, concierge and jobbing
tailor, perched in a sort of ’tween-decks, as low
ceilinged as it was confined in area. Here he could
be seen through the glass door sitting cross-legged
on his work-bench, his bowed back within an inch
of the floor above, stitching away at a National
Guard’s uniform, while the citoyenne Remade, whose
cooking stove boasted no chimney but the well of
the staircase, poisoned the other tenants with the
fumes of her stew-pots and frying-pans, and their
little girl Josephine, her face smudged with treacle
and looking as pretty as an angel, played on the
threshold with Mouton, the joiner’s dog. The
citoyenne, whose heart was as capacious as her ample
bosom and broad back, was reputed to bestow her
favours on her neighbour the citoyen Dupont senior,
who was one of the twelve constituting the Com-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 9

mittee of Surveillance. At any rate her husband
had his strong suspicions, and from morning to
night the house resounded with the racket of the
alternate squabbles and reconciliations of the pair.
The upper floors were occupied by the citoyen
Chaperon, gold and silver-smith, who had his shop
op the Quai de l’Horloge, by a health officer, an at-
torney, a goldbeater, and several employes at the
Palais de Justice.

Evariste Gamelin climbed the old-fashioned stair-
case as far as the fourth and last storey, where he
had his studio together with a bedroom for his
mother. At this point ended the wooden stairs laid
with tiles that took the place of the grand stairway
of the more important floors. A ladder clamped to
the wall led to a cock-loft, from which at that mo-
ment emerged a stout man with a handsome, florid,
rosy-cheeked face, climbing painfully down with an
enormous package clasped in his arms, yet hum-
ming gaily to himself : J’ai perdu mon serviteur.

Breaking off his song, he wished a polite good-day
to Gamelin, who returned him a fraternal greeting
and helped him down with his parcel, for which the
old man thanked him.

“There,” said he, shouldering his burden again,
“you have a batch of dancing-dolls which I am
going to deliver straight away to a toy-merchant in
the Rue de la Loi. There is a whole tribe of them
inside; I am their creator; they have received of
me a perishable body, exempt from joys and suffer-
ings. I have not given them the gift of thought,
for I am a benevolent God.”

It was the citoyen Brotteaux, once farmer of taxes
and ci-devant noble; his father, having made a for-
tune in these transactions, had bought himself an

10 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

office conferring a title on the possessor. In the good
old times Maurice Brotteaux had called himself
Monsieur des Ilettes and used to give elegant sup-
pers which the fair Madame de Rochemaure, wife of
a King’s procureur , enlivened with her bright glances,
— a finished gentlewoman whose loyal fidelity was
never impugned so long as the Revolution left
Maurice Brotteaux in possession of his offices and
emoluments, his hotel, his estates and his noble
name. The Revolution swept them all away. He
made his living by painting portraits under the
archways of doors, making pancakes and fritters on
the Quai de la Megisserie, composing speeches for
the representatives of the people and giving dancing
lessons to the young citoyennes. At the present time,
in his garret into which you climbed by a ladder
and where a man could not stand upright, Maurice
Brotteaux, the proud owner of a glue-pot, a ball of
twine, a box of water-colours and sundry clippings
of paper, manufactured dancing-dolls which he sold
to wholesale toy-dealers, who resold them to the
pedlars who hawked them up and down the Champs-
Elysees at the end of a pole, — glittering magnets to
draw the little ones’ eyes. Amidst the calamities of
the State and the disaster that overwhelmed him-
self, he preserved an unruffled spirit, reading for
the refreshment of his mind in his Lucretius, which
he carried with him wherever he went in the gaping
pocket of his plum-coloured surtout.

Evariste Gamelin pushed open the door of his
lodging. It offered no resistance, for his poverty
spared him any trouble about lock and key; when
his mother from force of habit shot the bolt, he would
tell her: “Why, what’s the good? Folks don’t steal
spiders’-webs, — nor my pictures, neither.” In his

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST ll

workroom were piled, under a thick layer of dust or
with faces turned to the wall, the canvases of his
student years, — when, as the fashion of the day was,
he limned scenes of gallantry, depicting with a sleek,
timorous brush emptied quivers and birds put to
flight, risky pastimes and reveries of bliss, high-
kilted goose-girls and shepherdesses with rose-
wreathed bosoms.

But it was not a genre that suited his tempera-
ment. His cold treatment of such like scenes proved
the painter’s incurable purity of heart. Amateurs
were right: Gamelin had no gifts as an erotic artist.
Nowadays, though he was still short of thirty, these
subjects struck him as dating from an immemorial
antiquity. He saw in them the degradation wrought
by Monarchy, the shameful effects of the corrup-
tion of Courts. He blamed himself for having prac-
tised so contemptible a style and prostituted his
genius to the vile arts of slavery. Now, citizen of a
free people, he occupied his hand with bold charcoal
sketches of Liberties, Rights of Man, French Con-
stitutions, Republican Virtues, the People as Her-
cules felling the Hydra of Tyranny, throwing into
each and all his compositions all the fire of his
patriotism. Alas! he could not make a living by
it. The times were hard for artists. No doubt the
fault did not lie with the Convention, which was hurl-
ing its armies against the kings gathered on every
frontier, which, proud, unmoved, determined in the
face of the coalesced powers of Europe, false and
ruthless to itself, was rending its own bosom with
its own hands, which was setting up terror as the
order of the day, establishing for the punishment of
plotters a pitiless tribunal to whose devouring maw
it was soon to deliver up its own members; but

12

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

which through it all, with calm and thoughtful
brow, the patroness of science and friend of all
things beautiful, was reforming the calendar, insti-
tuting technical schools, decreeing competitions in
painting and sculpture, founding prizes to encour-
age artists, organizing annual exhibitions, opening
the Museum of the Louvre, and, on the model of
Athens and Rome, endowing with a stately sub-
limity the celebration of National festivals and pub-
lic obsequies. But F rench Art, once so widely appre-
ciated in England, and Germany, in Russia, in
Poland, now found every outlet to foreign lands
closed. Amateurs of painting, dilettanti of the fine
arts, great noblemen and financiers, were ruined,
had emigrated or were in hiding. The men the
Revolution had enriched, peasants who had bought
up National properties, speculators, army-contrac-
tors, gamesters of the Palais-Royal, durst not at
present show their wealth, and did not care a fig for
pictures, either. It needed Regnault’s fame or the
youthful Gerard’s cleverness to sell a canvas.
Greuze, Fragonard, Houin were reduced to indi-
gence. Prud’hon could barely earn bread for his
wife and children by drawing subjects which Copia
reproduced in stippled engravings. The patriot
painters Hennequin, Wicar, Topino-Lebrun were
starving. Gamelin, without means to meet the
expenses of a picture, to hire a model or buy colours,
abandoned his vast canvas of The Tyrant pursued in
the Infernal Regions by the Furies , after barely sketch-
ing in the main outlines. It blocked up half the
studio with its half-finished, threatening shapes,
greater than life-size, and its vast brood of green
snakes, each darting forth two sharp, forked tongues.
In the foreground, to the left, could be discerned

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 13

Charon in his boat, a haggard, wild-looking figure,
— a powerful and well conceived design, but of the
schools, schooly. There was far more of genius and
less of artificiality in a canvas of smaller dimensions,
also unfinished, that hung in the best lighted corner
of the studio. It was an Orestes whom his sister
Electra was raising in her arms on his bed of pain.
The maiden was putting back with a moving tender-
ness the matted hair that hung over her brother’s
eyes. The head of the hero was tragic and fine, and
you could see a likeness in it to the painter’s own
countenance.

Gamelin cast many a mournful look at this com-
position; sometimes his fingers itched with the
craving to be at work on it, and his arms would be
stretched longingly towards the boldly sketched
figure of Electra, to fall back again helpless to his
sides. The artist was burning with enthusiasm, his
soul aspired to great achievements. But he had to
exhaust his energy on pot-boilers which he executed
indifferently, because he was bound to please the
taste of the vulgar and also because he had no skill
to impress trivial things with the seal of genius. He
drew little allegorical compositions which his com-
rade Desmahis engraved cleverly enough in black
or in colours and which were bought at a low figure
by a print-dealer in the Rue Honore, the citoyen
Blaise. But the trade was going from bad to worse,
declared Blaise, who for some time now had declined
to purchase anything.

This time, however, made inventive by necessity,
Gamelin had conceived a new and happy thought,
as he at any rate believed, — an idea that was to
make the print-seller’s fortune, and the engraver’s
and his own to boot. This was a “ patriotic” pack

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

15

basket on a chair and still standing, the better to
get her breath, began to groan over the high price
of victuals.

A shopkeeper’s wife till the death of her husband,
a cutler in the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Germain, at
the sign of the Ville de Chatcllerault, now reduced
to poverty, the citoyenue Garnelin lived in seclusion,
keeping house for her son the painter. He was the
elder of her two children. As for her daughter Julie,
at one time employed at a fashionable milliner’s in
the Rue Honore, the best thing was not to know
what had become ot her, for it was ill saying the
truth, that she had emigrated with an aristocrat,

“ Lord God!” sighed the citoyenv(\ showing her
son a loaf baked of heavy dun-coloured dough,
“bread is too dear for anything; the more reason
it should be made of pure wheat! At market
neither eggs nor green-stuff nor cheese to be had.
By dint of eating chestnuts, we’re like to grow' into
chestnuts,”

Alter a long pause, she began again;

“Why, 1 ve seen women in the streets who had
nothing to feed their little ones with. The distress
is sore among poor folks. And it will go on the same
till things are put hack on a proper footing.”

“Mother,” broke in (iamelm with a frown, “the
scarcity we suffer from is due to the unprincipled
buyers and speculators who starve the people and
connive with our foes over the border to render the
Republic odious to the citizens and to destroy liberty.
This comes of the Knssotms' plots and the traitor-
ous dealings of your Potions and Rolands. It is
well if the federalists in arms do not march on Paris
and massacre the patriot remnant whom famine is
too slow in killing I Ihere is no time to lose; wc

8 THE OCEAN OF STORY

There I saw a certain maiden gathering flowers at the
entrance of an arbour composed of the atimukta creeper. 1
She seemed, with her playful sidelong glances, to be threaten-
ing the lotus in her ear ; she kept raising her twining arm and
displaying half her bosom, and her beautiful loosened hair,
hanging down her back, seemed like the darkness seeking
shelter to escape from her moon-like face. And I said to
myself : “ Surely the Creator must have made this girl,
after he had got his hand in by creating Rambhfi and her
sister-nymphs, but one can see that she is mortal by the
winking of her eyes.” *

The moment I saw that gazelle-eyed maid, she pierced
my heart, like a crescent-headed javelin of Mara, bewildering
the three worlds. And the moment she saw me she was
overcome by Kama, and her hands were rendered nerveless
and listless by love, and she desisted from her amusement of
gathering flowers. She seemed, with the flashings of the ruby
in the midst of her moving flexible chain, 2 3 to be displaying
the flames of affection, that had broken forth from her heart,
in which they could not be contained ; and turning round, she
looked at me again and again with an eye that seemed to be
rendered more charming by the pupil coming down to rest in
its corner.

While we stood for a time looking at one another,
there arose there a great noise of people flying in terror. And
there came that way an infuriated elephant, driven mad by
the smell of wild elephants ; it had broken its chain and
thrown its rider, and the elephant-hook was swinging to and
fro at the end of its ear. The moment I saw the animal I
rushed forward, and taking up in my arms my beloved, who
was terrified, and whose attendants had run away, I carried
her into the middle of the crowd. Then she began to recover
her composure, and her attendants came up ; but just at
that moment the elephant, attracted by the noise of the

1 This is tlw Gaertncra raamosa, usually known in Sanskrit as Madhmti.
See Hooker, op. cU., vol. i, p. 4 IS, and Watt, op. cit., vol. iv, pp. M2, 25S.

2 Cf, the Nala episode in Vol, IV, p. %3[). — n.m.h.

3 More literally, u creeper-like chain.”

16

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

must tax the price of flour and guillotine every man
who speculates in the food of the people, foments
insurrection or palters with the foreigner. The
Convention has set up an extraordinary tribunal to
try conspirators. Patriots form the court; but will
its members have energy enough to defend the
fatherland against our foes ? There is hope in Robes-
pierre; he is virtuous. There is hope above all in
Marat. He loves the people, discerns its true in-
terests and promotes them. He was ever the first
to unmask traitors, to baffle plots. He is incorrup-
tible and fearless. He, and he alone, can save the
imperilled Republic.”

The citoyenne Gamelin shook her head, paying no
heed to the cockade that fell out of her cap at the
gesture.

“Have done, Evariste; your Marat is a man like
another and no better than the rest. You are young
and your head is full o. fancies. What you say to-
day of Marat, you said before of Mirabeau, of La
Fayette, of Petion, of Brissot.”

“Never!” cried Gamelin, who was genuinely
oblivious.

After clearing one end of the deal table of the
papers and books, brushes and chalks that littered
it, the citoyenne laid out on it the earthenware
soup-bowl, two tin porringers, two iron forks, the
loaf of brown bread and a jug of thin wine.

Mother and son ate the soup in silence and fin-
ished their meal with a small scrap of bacon. The
citoyenne, putting her titbit on her bread, used the
point of her pocket knife to convey the pieces one
by one slowly and solemnly to her toothless jaws
and masticated with a proper reverence the victuals
that had cost so dear.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

17

She had left the best part on the dish for her son,
who sat lost in a brown study.

“Eat, Evariste,” she repeated at regular inter-
vals, “eat,” — and on her lips the word had all the
solemnity of a religious commandment.

She began again with her lamentations on the
dearness of provisions, and again Gamelin demanded
taxation as the only remedy for these evils.

But she shrilled :

“There is no money left in the country. The
emigres have carried it all off with them. There is
no confidence left either. Everything is desperate.”

“Hush, mother, hush!” protested Gamelin.
“What matter our privations, our hardships of a
moment? The Revolution will win for all time the
happiness of the human race.”

The good dame sopped her bread in her wine; her
mood grew more cheerful and she smiled as her
thoughts returned to her young days, when she used
to dance on the green in honour of the King’s birth-
day. She well remembered too the day when Joseph
Gamelin, cutler by trade, had asked her hand in
marriage. And she told over, detail by detail, how
things had gone, — how her mother had bidden her:
“Go dress. We are going to the Place de Greve, to
Monsieur Bienassis’ shop, to see Damiens drawn
and quartered,” and what difficulty they had to
force their way through the press of eager spectators.
Presently, in Monsieur Bienassis’ shop, she had
seen Joseph Gamelin, wearing his fine rose-pink
coat and had known in an instant what he would
be at. All the time she sat at the window to see the
regicide torn with red-hot pincers, drenched with
molten lead, dragged at the tail of four horses and
thrown into the flames, Joseph Gamelin had stood

18 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

behind her chair and had never once left off com-
plimenting her on her complexion, her hair and her
figure.

She drained the last drop in her cup and con-
tinued her reminiscences of other days:

“I brought you into the world, Evariste, sooner
than I had expected, by reason of a fright I had
when I was big. It was on the Pont-Neuf, where I
came near being knocked down by a crowd of sight-
seers hurrying to Monsieur de Lally’s execution.
You were so little at your birth the surgeon thought
you would not live. But I felt sure God would be
gracious to me and preserve your life. I reared you
to the best of my powers, grudging neither pains
nor expense. It is fair to say, my Evariste, that
you showed me you were grateful and that, from
childhood up, you tried your best to recompense
me for what I had done. You were naturally affec-
tionate and tender-hearted. Your sister was not
bad at heart; but she was selfish and of unbridled
temper. Your compassion was greater than ever
was hers for the unfortunate. When the little rag-
amuffins of the neighbourhood robbed birds’ nests
in the trees, you always fought hard to rescue the
nestlings from their hands and restore them to
the mother, and many a time you did not give in till
after you had been kicked and cuffed cruelly. At
seven years of age, instead of wrangling with bad
boys, you would pace soberly along the street say-
ing over your catechism; and all the poor people
you came across you insisted on bringing home with
you to relieve their needs, till I was forced to whip
you to break you of the habit. You could not see a
living creature suffer without tears. When you had
done growing, you turned out a very handsome lad.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 19

To my great surprise, you appeared not to know it,
— how different from most pretty boys, who are full
of conceit and vain of their good looks!”

His old mother spoke the truth. Evariste at
twenty had had a grave and charming cast of
countenance, a beauty at once austere and feminine,
the countenance of a Minerva. Now his sombre
eyes and pale cheeks revealed a melancholy and
passionate soul. But his gaze, when it fell on his
mother, recovered for a brief moment its childish
softness.

She went on :

“You might have profited by your advantages to
run after the girls, but you preferred to stay with
me in the shop, and I had sometimes to tell you not
to hang on always to my apron-strings, but to go
and amuse yourself with your young companions.
To my dying day I shall always testify that you
have been a good son, Evariste. After your father’s
death, you bravely took me and provided for me;
though your work barely pays you, you have never
let me want for anything, and if we are at this mo-
ment destitute and miserable, I cannot blame you
for it. The fault lies with the Revolution.”

He raised his hand to protest; but she only
shrugged and continued:

“I am no aristocrat. I have seen the great in the
full tide of their power, and I can bear witness that
they abused their privileges. I have seen your
father cudgelled by the Due de Canaleilles’ lackeys
because he did not make way quick enough for their
master. I could never abide the Austrian — she was
too haughty and too extravagant. As for the King,
I thought him good-hearted, and it needed his trial
and condemnation to alter my opinion. In fact, I

!0

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

do not regret the old regime, — though I have had
some agreeable times under it. But never tell me
the Revolution is going to establish equality, because
men will never be equal; it is an impossibility, and,
let them turn the country upside down to their
heart’s content, there will still be great and small,
fat and lean in it.”

As she talked, she was busy putting away the
plates and dishes. The painter had left off listen-
ing. He was thinking out a design, — for a sans-
culotte, in red cap and carmagnole, who was to su-
persede the discredited knave of spades in his pack
of cards.

There was a sound of scratching on the door, and
a girl appeared, — a country wench, as broad as she
was long, red-haired and bandy-legged, a wen hiding
the left eye, the right so pale a blue it looked white,
with monstrous thick lips and teeth protruding
beyond them.

She asked Gamelin if he was Gamelin the painter
and if he could do her a portrait of her betrothed,
Ferrand (Jules), a volunteer serving with the Army
of the Ardennes.

Gamelin replied that he would be glad to execute
the portrait on the gallant warrior’s return.

But the girl insisted gently but firmly that it
must be done at once.

The painter protested, smiling in spite of himself
as he pointed out that he could do nothing without
the original.

The poor creature was dumfounded; she had
not foreseen the difficulty. Her head drooping over
the left shoulder, her hands clasped in front of her,
she stood still and silent as if overwhelmed by her
disappointment. Touched and diverted by so much

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

21

simplicity, and by way of distracting the poor, love-
sick creature’s grief, the painter handed her one of
the soldiers he had drawn in water-colours and
asked her if he was like that, her sweetheart in the
Ardennes.

She bent her doleful look on the sketch, and little
by little her eye brightened, sparkled, flashed, and
her moon face beamed out in a radiant smile.

“It is his very likeness,” she cried at last. “It is
the very spit of Jules Ferrand, it is Jules Ferrand to
the life.”

Before it occurred to the artist to take the sheet
of paper out of her hands, she folded it carefully
with her coarse red fingers into a tiny square, slipped
it over her heart between her stays and her shift,
handed the painter an assignat for five livres, and
wishing the company a very good day, hobbled
light-heartedly to the door and so out of the room.

24

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

found in every cellar, the Swiss smuggled in coun-
terfeits by the million, whole packets were put in
circulation in the inns, the English landed bales of
them every day on our coasts, to ruin the Repub-
lic’s credit and bring good patriots to destitution.
Elodie was in terror of accepting bad paper, and
still more in terror of passing it and being treated
as an accomplice of Pitt, though she had a firm
belief in her own good luck and felt pretty sure of
coming off best in any emergency.

Evariste looked at her with the sombre gaze that
speaks more movingly of love than the most smiling
face. She returned his gaze with a mocking curl of
the lips and an arch gleam in the dark eyes, — an
expression she wore because she knew he loved her
and liked to know it and because such a look pro-
vokes a lover, makes him complain of ill-usage,
brings him to the speaking point, if he has not
spoken already, which was Evariste’s case.

Before depositing the assignats in the strong-box,
she produced from her work-basket a white scarf,
which she had begun to embroider, and set to work
on it. At once industrious and a coquette, she
knew instinctively how to ply her needle so as to
fascinate an admirer and make a pretty thing for
her wearing at one and the same time; she had quite
different ways of working according to the person
watching her, — a nonchalant way for those she
would lull into a gentle languor, a capricious way
for those she was fain to see in a more or less de-
spairing mood. For Evariste, she bent with an air
of painstaking absorption over her scarf, for she
wanted to stir a sentiment of serious affection in
his heart.

Elodie was neither very young nor very pretty.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 25

She might have been deemed plain at the first
glance. She was a brunette, with an olive com-
plexion; under the broad white kerchief knotted
carelessly about her head, from which the dark lus-
trous ringlets escaped, her eyes of fire gleamed as if
they would burn their orbits. Her round face with
its prominent cheek-bones, laughing lips and rather
broad nose, that gave it a wild-wood, voluptuous
expression, reminded the painter of the faun of the
Borghese, a cast of which he had seen and been
struck with admiration for its freakish charm. A
faint down of moustache accentuated the curve of
the full lips. A bosom that seemed big with love
was confined by a crossed kerchief in the fashion of
the year. Her supple waist, her active limbs, her
whole vigorous body expressed in every movement
a wild, delicious freedom. Every glance, every
breath, every quiver of the warm flesh called for
love and promised passion. There, behind the trades-
man’s counter, she seemed rather a dancing nymph,
a bacchante of the opera, stripped of her lynx skin
and thyrsus, imprisoned, and travestied by a ma-
gician’s spell under the modest trappings of a house-
wife by Chardin.

“My father is not at home,” she told the painter;
“wait a little, he will not be long.”

In the small brown hands the needle travelled
swiftly over the fine lawn.

“Is the pattern to your taste. Monsieur Ga-
melin?”

It was not in Gamelin’s nature to pretend. And
love, exaggerating his confidence, encouraged him
to speak quite frankly.

“You embroider cleverly, citoyenne; but, if I am
to say what I think, the pattern you have traced is

26

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

not simple enough or bold enough, and smacks of
the affected taste that in France governed too long
the ornamentation of dress and furniture and wood-
work; all those rosettes and wreaths recall the
pretty, finikin style that was in favour under the
tyrant. There is a new birth of taste. Alas! we
have much leeway to make up. In the days of the
infamous Louis XV the art of decoration had some-
thing Chinese about it. They made pot-bellied
cabinets with drawer handles grotesque in their
contortions, good for nothing but to be thrown on
the fire to warm good patriots. Simplicity alone is
beautiful. We must hark back to the antique.
David designs beds and chairs from the Etruscan
vases and the wall-paintings of Herculaneum.”

“Yes, I have seen those beds and chairs,” said
Elodie, “they are lovely. Soon we shall want no
other sort. I am like you, I adore the antique.”

“Well, then, citoyenne” returned Evariste, “if
you had limited your pattern to a Greek border,
with ivy leaves, serpents or crossed arrows, it would
have been worthy of a Spartan maiden . . . and of
you. But you can still keep this design by simpli-
fying it, reducing it to the plain lines of beauty.”

She asked her preceptor what should be picked
out.

He bent over the work, and the girl’s ringlets
swept lightly over his cheek. Their hands met and
their breaths mingled. For an instant Evariste
tasted an ecstatic bliss, but to feel Elodie’s lips so
close to his own filled him with fear, and dreading
to alarm her modesty, he drew back quickly.

The citoyenne Blaise was in love with Evariste
Gamelin; she thought his great ardent eyes superb
no less than the fine oval of his pale face, and his

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

27

abundant black locks, parted above the brow and
falling in showers about his shoulders; his gravity
of demeanour, his cold reserve, his severe manner
and uncompromising speech which never conde-
scended to flattery, were equally to her liking. She
was in love, and therefore believed him possessed of
supreme artistic genius that would one day blossom
forth in incomparable masterpieces and make his
name world-famous, — and she loved him the better
for the belief. The citoyenne Blaise was no prude
on the score of masculine purity and her scruples
were not offended because a man should satisfy his
passions and follow his own tastes and caprices;
she loved Evariste, who was virtuous; she did not
love him because he was virtuous, albeit she appre-
ciated the advantage of his being so in that she had
no cause for jealousy or suspicion or any fear of
rivals in his affections.

Nevertheless, for the time being, she deemed his
reserve a little overdone. If Racine’s “Aricie,” who
loved “ Hippolyte,” admired the youthful hero’s un-
tameable virtue, it was with the hope of winning a
victory over it, and she would quickly have be-
wailed a sternness of moral fibre that had refused
to be softened for her sake. At the first oppor-
tunity she more than half declared her passion to
constrain him to speak out himself. Like her proto-
type the tender-hearted “ Aricie,” the citoyenne Blaise
was much inclined to think that in love the woman
is bound to make the advances. “The fondest
hearts,” she told herself, “are the most fearful; they
need help and encouragement. Besides, they are
so simple a woman can go half way and even further
without their even knowing it, if only she lets them
fancy the credit is theirs of the bold attack and the

28

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

glorious victory.” What made her more confident
of success was the fact that she knew for a certainty
(and indeed there was no doubt about it) that
Evariste, before ever the Revolution had made him
a hero, had loved a mistress like any ordinary mor-
tal, a very unheroic creature, no other than the
concierge at the Academy of Painting. Elodie, who
was a girl of some experience, quite realised that
there are different sorts of love. The sentiment
Evariste inspired in her heart was profound enough
for her to dream of making him the partner of her
life. She was very ready to marry him, but hardly
expected her father would approve the union of his
only daughter with a poor and unknown artist.
Gamelin had nothing, while the printseller turned
over large sums of money. The Amour peintre
brought him in large profits, the share market larger
still, and he was in partnership with an army con-
tractor who supplied the cavalry of the Republic
with rushes in place of hay and mildewed oats.
In a word, the cutler’s son of the Rue Saint-
Dominique was a very insignificant personage be-
side the publisher of engravings, a man known
throughout Europe, related to the Blaizots, Basans
and Didots, and an honoured guest at the houses of
the citoyens Saint-Pierre and Florian. Not that, as
an obedient daughter should, she held her father’s
consent to be an indispensable preliminary to her
settlement in life. The latter, early left a widower,
and a man of a self-indulgent, volatile temper, as
enterprising with women as he was in business, had
never paid much heed to her and had left her to
develop at her own sweet will, untrammelled whether
by parental advice or parental affection, more care-
ful to ignore than to safeguard the girl’s behaviour,

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

29

whose passionate temperament he appreciated as a
connoisseur of the sex and in whom he recognized
charms far and away more seductive than a pretty
face. Too generous-hearted to be circumspect, too
clever to come to harm, cautious even in her ca-
prices, passion had never made her forget the social
proprieties. Her father was infinitely grateful for
this prudent behaviour, and as she had inherited
from him a good head for business and a taste for
money-making, he never troubled himself as to the
mysterious reasons that deterred a girl so eminently
marriageable from entering that estate and kept
her at home, where she was as good as a house-
keeper and four clerks to him. At twenty-seven
she felt old enough and experienced enough to man-
age her own concerns and had no nefcd to ask the
advice or consult the wishes of a father still a young
man, and one of so easy-going and careless a temper.
But for her to marry Gamelin, Monsieur Blaise
must needs contrive a future for a son-in-law with
such poor prospects, give him an interest in the
business, guarantee him regular work as he did to
several artists already — in fact, one way or another,
provide him with a livelihood; and such a favour
was out of the question, she considered, whether for
the one to offer or the other to accept, so small was
the bond of sympathy between the two men.

The difficulty troubled the girl’s tender heart and
wise brain. She saw nothing to alarm her in a secret
union with her lover and in taking the author of na-
ture for sole witness of their mutual troth. Her creed
found nothing blameworthy in such a union, which
the independence of her mode of life made possible
and which Evariste’s honourable and virtuous char-
acter gave her good hopes of forming without appre-

30

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

hension as to the result. But Gamelin was hard
put to it to live and provide his old mother with the
barest necessaries, and it did not seem as though in
so straitened an existence room could well be found
for an amour even when reduced to the simplicity
of nature. Moreover, Evariste had not yet spoken
and declared his intentions, though certainly the
citoyenne Blaise hoped to bring him to this before
long.

She broke off her meditations, and the needle
stopped at the same moment.

“Citoyen Evariste,” she said, “I shall not care
for the scarf, unless you like it too. Draw me a
pattern, please. Meanwhile, I will copy Penelope
and unravel what I have done in your absence.”

He answered in a tone of sombre enthusiasm:

“I promise you I will, citoyenne. I will draw you
the brand of the tyrannicide Harmodius, — a sword
in a wreath,” — and pulling out his pencil, he sketched
in a design of swords and flowers in the sober, un-
adorned style he admired. And as he drew, he
expounded his views of art:

“A regenerated People,” he declared, “must re-
pudiate all the legacies of servitude, bad taste, bad
outline, bad drawing. Watteau, Boucher, Frago-
nard worked for tyrants and for slaves. Their works
show no feeling for good style or purity of line, no
love of nature or truth. Masks, dolls, fripperies,
monkey-tricks, — nothing else! Posterity will de-
spise their frivolous productions. In a hundred
years all Watteau’s pictures will be banished to the
garrets and falling to pieces from neglect; in 1893
struggling painters will be daubing their studies
over Boucher’s canvases. David has opened the
way; he approaches the Antique, but he has not

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 31

yet reached true simplicity, true grandeur, bare and
unadorned. Our artists have many secrets still to
learn from the friezes of Herculaneum, the Roman
bas-reliefs, the Etruscan vases.”

He dilated at length on antique beauty, then
came back to Fragonard, whom he abused with
inexhaustible venom:

“Do you know him, citoyenne ?”

Elodie nodded.

“You likewise know good old Greuze, who is
ridiculous enough, to be sure, with his scarlet coat
and his sword. But he looks like a wise man of
Greece beside Fragonard. I met him, a while ago,
the miserable old man, trotting by under the arcades
of the Palais-Egalite, powdered, genteel, sprightly,
spruce, hideous. At sight of him, I longed that,
failing Apollo, some sturdy friend of the arts might
hang him up to a tree and flay him alive like Marsyas
as an everlasting warning to bad painters.”

Elodie gave him a long look out of her dancing,
wanton eyes.

“You know how to hate. Monsieur Gamelin, are
we to conclude you know also how to lo . . . ?”

“Is that you, Gamelin?” broke in a tenor voice;
it was the citoyen Blaise just come back to his shop.
He advanced, boots creaking, charms rattling, coat-
skirts flying, an enormous black cocked hat on his
head, the corners of which touched his shoulders.

Elodie, picking up her work-basket, retreated to
her chamber.

“Well, Gamelin!” inquired the citoyen Blaise,
“have you brought me anything new?”

“May be,” declared the painter, — and proceeded
to expound his ideas.

“Our playing cards present a grievous and star-

32

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

tling contrast with our present ways of thinking.
The names of knave and king offend the ears of a
patriot. I have designed and executed a reformed,
Revolutionary pack in which for kings, queens and
knaves are substituted Liberties, Equalities, Fra-
ternities; the aces in a border of fasces, are called
Laws. . . .You call Liberty of clubs, Equality of
spades, Fraternity of diamonds, Law of hearts. I
venture to think my cards are drawn with some
spirit; I propose to have them engraved on copper
by Desmahis, and to take out letters of patent.”

So saying and extracting from his portfolio some
finished designs in water-colour, the artist handed
them to the printseller.

The citoyen Blaise declined to take them, and
turning away:

“My lad,” he sneered, “take ’em to the Conven-
tion; they will perhaps accord you a vote of thanks.
But never think to make a sol by your new inven-
tion which is not new at all. You’re a day behind
the fair. Your Revolutionary pack of cards is the
third I’ve had brought me. Your comrade Dugourc
offered me last week a picquet set with four Geniuses
of the People, four Liberties, four Equalities. An-
other was suggested, with Sages and Heroes, Cato,
Rousseau, Hannibal, — I don’t know what all! . . .
And these cards had the advantage over yours, my
friend, in being coarsely drawn and cut on wood
blocks — with a penknife. How little you know the
world to dream that players will use cards designed
in the taste of David and engraved a la Bartolozzi!
And then again, what a strange mistake to think it
needs all this to-do to suit the old packs to the new
ideas. Out of their own heads, the good sansculottes
can find a corrective for what offends them, saying.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

33

instead of ‘king’ — ‘The Tyrant!’ or just ‘The
fat pig ! 5 . They go on using the same old filthy
cards and never buy new ones. The great market
for playing-cards is the gaming-hells of the Palais-
Egalite; well, I advise you to go there and offer the
croupiers and punters there your Liberties, your
Equalities, your . . . what d’ye call ’em? . . .
Laws of hearts . . . and come back and tell me
what sort of a reception they gave you!”

The citoyen Blaise sat down on the counter, filliped
away sundry grains of snuff from his nankeen breeches
and looking at Gamelin with an air of gentle pity:

“Let me give you a bit of advice, citoyen; if you
want to make your living, drop your patriotic packs
of cards, leave your revolutionary symbols alone,
have done with your Hercules, your hydras, your
Furies pursuing guilt, your Geniuses of Liberty, and
paint me pretty girls. The people’s ardour for re-
generation grows lukewarm with time, but men will
always love women. Paint me women, all pink and
white, with little feet and tiny hands. And get this
into your thick skull that nobody cares a fig about
the Revolution or wants to hear another word
about it.”

But fivariste drew himself up in indignant
protest:

“What! not hear another word of the Revolu-
tion! . . . But, why surely, the restoration of
liberty, the victories of our armies, the chastisement
of tyrants are events that will startle the most re-
mote posterity. How could we not be struck by
such portents? . . . What! the sect of the sanscu-
lotte Jesus has lasted well-nigh eighteen centuries,
and the religion of Liberty is to be abolished after
barely four years of existence!”

34

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

But Jean Blaise resumed in a tone of superiority:

“You walk in a dream; I see life as it is. Believe
me, friend, the Revolution is a bore; it lasts over
long. Five years of enthusiasm, five years of fra-
ternal embraces, of massacres, of fine speeches, of
Marseillaises , of tocsins, of ‘hang up the aristo-
crats,’ of heads promenaded on pikes, of women
mounted astride of cannon, of trees of Liberty
crowned with the red cap, of white-robed maidens
and old men drawn about the streets in flower-
wreathed cars; of imprisonments and guillotinings,
of proclamations, and short commons, of cockades
and plumes, swords and carmagnoles — it grows
tedious! And then folk are beginning to lose the
hang of it all. We have gone through too much, we
have seen too many of the great men and noble
patriots whom you have led in triumph to the
Capitol only to hurl them afterwards from the Tar-
peian rock, — Necker, Mirabeau, La Fayette, Bailly,
Petion, Manuel, and how many others! How can
we be sure you are not preparing the same fate for
your new heroes? . . . Men have lost all count.”

“Their names, citoyen Blaise; name them, these
heroes we are making ready to sacrifice!” cried
Gamelin in a tone that recalled the print-dealer to a
sense of prudence.

“I am a Republican and a patriot,” he replied,
clapping his hand on his heart. “I am as good a
Republican as you, as ardent a patriot as you,
citoyen Gamelin. I do not suspect your zeal nor
accuse you of any backsliding. But remember that
my zeal and my devotion to the State are attested
by numerous acts. Here you have my principles:
I give my confidence to every individual competent
to serve the Nation. Before the men whom the

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

35

general voice elects to the perilous honour of the
Legislative office, such as Marat, such as Robes-
pierre, I bow my head; I am ready to support them
to the measure of my poor ability and offer them the
humble co-operation of a good citizen. The Com-
mittees can bear witness to my ardour and self-
sacrifice. In conjunction with true patriots, I have
furnished oats and fodder to our gallant cavalry,
boots for our soldiers. This very day I am despatch-
ing from Vernon a convoy of sixty oxen to the Army
of the South through a country infested with brig-
ands and patrolled by the emissaries of Pitt and
Conde. I do not talk; I act.”

Gamelin calmly put back his sketches in his port-
folio, the strings of which he tied and then slipped
it under his arm.

“It is a strange contradiction,” he said through
his clenched teeth, “to see men help our soldiers to
carry through the world the liberty they betray in
their own homes by sowing discontent and alarm
in the soul of its defenders. . . . Greeting and fare-
well, citoyen Blaise.”

Before turning down the alley that runs along-
side the Oratoire, Gamelin, his heart big with love
and anger, wheeled round for a last look at the red
carnations blossoming on a certain window-sill.

He did not despair; the fatherland would yet be
saved. Against Jean Blaise’s unpatriotic speeches
he set his faith in the Revolution. Still he was bound
to recognize that the tradesman had some show of
reason when he asserted that the people of Paris
had lost its old interest in public events. Alas! it
was but too manifest that to the enthusiasm of the
early days had little by little succeeded a wide-
spread indifference, that never again would be seen

36

THE GODS ARE ATHIR&T

the mighty crowds, unanimous in their ardour, of
’89, never again the millions, one in heart and soul,
that in ’go thronged round the altar of the federes.
Well, good citizens must show double zeal and
courage, must rouse the people from its apathy,
bidding it choose between liberty and death.

Such were Gamelin’s thoughts, and the memory
of filodie was a spur to his confidence.

Coming to the Quais, he saw the sun setting in
the distant west behind lowering clouds that were
like mountains of glowing lava; the roofs of the city
were bathed in a golden light; the windows flashed
back a thousand dazzling reflections. And Gamelin
pictured the Titans forging out of the molten frag-
ments of by-gone worlds Dike, the city of brass.

Not having a morsel of bread for his mother or
himself, he was dreaming of a place at the limitless
board that should have all the world for guests and
welcome regenerated humanity to the feast. Mean-
time, he tried to persuade himself that the father-
land, as a good mother should, would feed her faith-
ful child. Shutting his mind against the gibes of
the printseller, he forced himself to believe that his
notion of a Revolutionary pack of cards was a novel
one and a good one, and that with these happily
conceived sketches of his he held a fortune in the
portfolio under his arm. “Desmahis,” he told him-
self, “ shall engrave them. We will publish for our-
selves the new patriotic toy and we are sure to sell
ten thousand packs in a month, at twenty sols
apiece.”

In his impatience to realize the project, he strode
off at once for the Quai de la Ferraille, where Des-
mahis lived over a glazier’s shop.

The entrance was through the shop. The glazier’s

tUe GODS ARE ATHIRST 37

wife informed Gamelin that the citoyen Desmahis
was not in, a fact that in no wise surprised the
painter, who knew his friend was of a vagabond and
dissipated humour and who marvelled that a man
could engrave so much and so well as he did while
showing so little perseverance. Gamelin made up
his mind to wait a while for his return and the
woman offered him a chair. She was in a black
mood and began to grumble at the badness of trade,
though she had always been told that the Revolu-
tion, by breaking windows, was making the glaziers’
fortunes.

Night was falling; so abandoning his idea of
waiting for his comrade, Gamelin took his leave of
his hostess of the moment. As he was crossing the
Pont-Neuf, he saw a detachment of National Guards
debouch from the Quai des Morfondus. They Were
mounted and carried torches. They were driving
back the crowd, and amid a mighty clatter of sabres
escorting a cart driving slowly on its way to the
guillotine with a man whose name no one knew, a
ci-devant noble, the first prisoner condemned by the
newly constituted Revolutionary Tribunal. He
could be seen by glimpses between the guardsmen’s
hats, sitting with hands tied behind his back, his
head bared and swaying from side to side, his face
to the cart’s tail. The headsman stood beside him
lolling against the rail. The passers-by had stopped
to look and were telling each other it was likely one
of the fellows who starved the people, and staring
with eyes of indifference. Gamelin, coming closer,
caught sight of Desmahis among the spectators; he
was struggling to push a way through the press and
cut across the line of march. He called out to him
and clapped a hand on his shoulder, — and Desmahis

38

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

turned his head. He was a young man with a hand-
some face and a stalwart person. In former days,
at the Academy, they used to say he had the head
of Bacchus gn the torso of Hercules. His friends
nicknamed him “Barbaroux” because of his like-
ness to that representative of the people.

“Come here,” Gamelin said to him, “I have some-
thing of importance to say to you, Desmahis.”

“Leave me alone,” the latter answered peevishly,
muttering some half-heard explanation, looking out
as he spoke for a chance of darting across:

“ I was following a divine creature, in a straw hat,
a milliner’s wench, with her flaxen hair down her
back; that cursed cart has blocked my way. . . .
She has gone on ahead, she is at the other end of
the bridge by now!”

Gamelin endeavoured to hold him back by his
coat skirts, swearing his business was urgent.

But Desmahis had already slipped away between
horses, guards, swords and torches, and was in hot
pursuit of the milliner’s girl.

IV

r was ten o’clock in the forenoon.
The April sun bathed the tender
leafage of the trees in light. A storm
had cleared the air during the night
and it was deliciously fresh and sweet.
At long intervals a horseman passing
along the Allee des Veuves broke the
silence and solitude. On the outskirts of the shady
avenue, over against a rustic cottage known as La
Belle Lilloise, Evariste sat on a wooden bench wait-
ing for Elodie. Since the day their fingers had met
over the embroidery and their breaths had mingled,
he had never been back to the Amour peintre. For
a whole week his proud stoicism and his timidity,
which grew more extreme every day, had kept him
away from Elodie. He had written her a letter con-
ceived in a key of gravity, at once sombre and
ardent, in which, explaining the grievance he had
against the citoyen Blaise, but saying no word of his
love and concealing his chagrin, he announced his
intention of never returning to her father’s shop,
and was now showing greater steadfastness in keep-
ing this resolution than a woman in love was quite
likely to approve.

A born fighter whose bent was to defend her
property under all circumstances, Elodie instantly
turned her mind to the task of winning back her
lover. At first she thought of going to see him at
the studio in the Place de Thionville. But knowing

39

40

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

his touchy temper and judging from his letter that
he was sick and sore, she feared he might come to
regard daughter and father with the same angry
displeasure and make a point of never seeing her
again; so she deemed it wiser to invite him to a
sentimental, romantic rendezvous which he could
not well decline, where she would have ample time
to cajole and charm him and where solitude would
be her ally to fascinate his senses and overcome his
scruples.

At this period, in all the English gardens and all
the fashionable promenades, rustic cottages were
to be found, built by clever architects, whose aim it
was to flatter the taste of the city folk for a country
life. The Belle Lilloise was occupied as a house of
light refreshment; its exterior bore a look of poverty
that was part of the mise en scene and it stood on
the fragments, artistically imitated, of a fallen tower,
so as to unite with the charm of rusticity the melan-
choly appeal of a ruined castle. Moreover, as
though a peasant’s cot and a shattered donjon were
not enough to stir the sensibilities of his customers,
the owner had raised a tomb beneath a weeping-
willow, — a column surmounted by a funeral urn
and bearing the inscription: “Cleonice to her faith-
ful Azor.” Rustic cots, ruined keeps, imitation
tombs, — on the eve of being swept away, the aris-
tocracy had erected in its ancestral parks these sym-
bols of poverty, of decadence and of death. And
now the patriot citizen found his delight in drink-
ing, dancing, making love in sham hovels, under the
broken vaults, a sham in their very ruin, of sham
cloisters and surrounded by a sham graveyard; for
was not he too, like his betters, a lover of nature, a
disciple of Jean-Jacques? was not his heart stuffed

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

41

as full as theirs with sensibility and the philosophy
of humanity ?

Reaching the rendezvous before the appointed
time, Evariste waited, measuring the minutes by
the beating of his heart as by the pendulum of a
clock. A patrol passed, guarding a convoy of pris-
oners. Ten minutes after a woman dressed all in
pink, carrying a bouquet as the fashion was, escorted
by a gentleman in a three-cornered hat, red coat,
striped waistcoat and breeches, slipped into the
cottage, both so very like the gallants and dames of
the ancien regime one was bound to think with the
citoyen Blaise that mankind possesses characteris-
tics Revolutions cannot change.

A few minutes later, coming from Rueii or Saint-
Cloud, an old woman carrying a cylindrical box,
painted in brilliant colours, arrived and sat down
beside Gamelin, on his bench. She put down her
box in front of her, and he saw that the lid had a
turning needle fixed on it; the poor woman’s trade
was to hold a lottery in the public gardens for the
children to try their luck at. She also dealt in
“ladies’ pleasures,” an old-fashioned sweetmeat
which she sold under a new name; whether because
the time-honoured title of “ forget-me-nots ” called
up inappropriate ideas of unhappiness and retri-
bution or that folks had just got tired of it in course
of time, “forget-me-nots” were now yclept “ladies’
pleasures.”

The old dame wiped the sweat from her forehead
with a corner of her apron and broke out into railings
against heaven, upbraiding God for injustice when
he made life so hard for his creatures. Her husband
kept a tavern on the river-bank at Saint-Cloud,
while she came in every day to the Champs Elysees,

42

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

sounding her rattle and crying: “Ladies' pleasures ,
come buy, come buy!” And with all this toil the
old couple could not scrape enough together to end
their days in comfort.

Seeing the young man beside her disposed to
commiserate with her, she expounded at great length
the origin of her misfortunes. It was all the Repub-
lic; by robbing the rich, it was taking the bread out
of poor people’s mouths. And there was no hoping
for a better state of affairs. Things would only go
from bad to worse, — she knew that from many
tokens. At Nanterre a woman had had a baby
born with a serpent’s head; the lightning had struck
the church at Rueil and melted the cross on the
steeple; a were-wolf had been seen in the woods of
Chaville. Masked men were poisoning the springs
and throwing plague powders in the air to cause
diseases. . . .

Evariste saw filodie spring from a carriage and
run forward. The girl’s eyes flashed in the clear
shadow cast by her straw hat; her lips, as red as
the carnations she held in her hand, were wreathed
in smiles. A scarf of black silk, crossed over the
bosom, was knotted behind the back. Her yellow
gown displayed the quick movements of the knees
and showed a pair of low-heeled shoes below the
hem. The hips were almost entirely unconfined;
the Revolution had enfranchised the waists of its
citoyennes . For all that, the skirts, still puffed out
below the loins, marked the curves by exaggerating
them and veiled the reality beneath an artificial
amplitude of outline.

He tried to speak but could not find his voice, and
was chagrined at his failure, which Elodie preferred
to the most eloquent greeting. She noticed also and

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

43

looked upon it as a good omen, that he had tied his
cravat with more than usual pains.

She gave him her hand.

“I wanted to see you,” she began, “and talk to
you. I did not answer your letter; I did not like
it and I did not think it worthy of you. It would
have been more to my taste if it had been more
outspoken. It would be to malign your character
and common sense to suppose you do not mean to
return to the Amour 'peintre because you had a
trifling altercation there about politics with a man
many years your senior. Rest assured you have no
cause to fear my father will receive you ill whenever
you come to see us again. You do not know him;
he has forgotten both what he said to you and what
you said in reply. I do not say there is any great
bond of sympathy between you two; but he bears
no malice; I tell you frankly he pays no great heed
to you . . . nor to me. He thinks only of his
own affairs and his own pleasures.”

She stepped towards the shrubberies surrounding
the Belle Lilloise , and he followed her with some-
thing of repugnance, knowing it to be the trysting-
place of mercenary lovers and amours of a day.
She selected the table furthest out of sight.

“How many things I have to tell you, Evariste.
Friendship has its rights; you do not forbid me to
exercise them? I have much to say about you
. . . and something about myself, if you will let
me.

The landlord having brought a carafe of lemonade,
she filled their glasses herself with the air of a care-
ful housewife; then she began to tell him about her
childhood, described her mother’s beauty, which she
loved to dilate upon both as a tribute to the latter’s

44

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

memory and as the source of her own good looks,
and boasted of her grandparents’ sturdy vigour, for
she was proud of her bourgeois blood. She related
how at sixteen she had lost this mother she adored
and had entered on a life without anyone to love or
rely upon. She painted herself as she was, a ve-
hement, passionate nature, full of sensibility and
courage, and concluded:

“Oh, Evariste, my girlhood was so sad and lonely
I cannot but know what a prize is a heart like yours,
and I will not surrender, I give you fair warning, of
my own free will and without an effort to retain it,
a sympathy on which I trusted I might count and
which I held dear.”

Evariste gazed at her tenderly.

“Can it be, Elodie, that I am not indifferent to
you? Can I really think ... ?”

He broke off, fearing to say too much and thereby
betray so trusting a friendliness.

She gave him a little confiding hand that half-
peeped out of the long narrow sleeve with its lace
frillings. Her bosom rose and fell in long-drawn
sighs.

“Credit me, Evariste, with all the sentiments
you would have me feel for you, and you will not be
mistaken in the dispositions of my heart.”

“Elodie, Elodie, you say that? will you still say
it when you know . . .” — he hesitated.

She dropped her eyes; and he finished the’ sen-
tence in a whisper :

“. . . when you know I love you?”

As she heard the declaration, she blushed, — with
pleasure. Yet, while her eyes still spoke of a tender
ecstasy, a quizzical smile flickered in spite of herself
about one corner of her lips. She was thinking:

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

45

“And he imagines he proposed first! . . . and he
is afraid perhaps of offending me! . .

Then she said to him fondly:

“So you had never seen, dear heart, that I loved
you?”

They seemed to themselves to be alone, the only
two beings in the universe. In his exaltation,
Evariste raised his eyes to the firmament flashing
with blue and gold :

“See, the sky is looking down at us! It is benign;
it is adorable, as you are, beloved; it has your
brightness, your gentleness, your smile.”

He felt himself one with all nature, it formed part
and parcel of his joy and triumph. To his eyes, it
was to celebrate his betrothal that the chestnut
blossoms lit their flaming candles, the poplars burned
aloft like giant torches.

He exulted in his strength and stature. She, with
her softer as well as finer nature, more pliable and
more malleable, rejoiced in her very weakness and,
his subjection once secured, instantly bowed to his
ascendancy; now she had brought him under her
slavery, she acknowledged him for the master, the
hero, the god, burned to obey, to admire, to offer
her homage. In the shade of the shrubbery he gave
her a long, ardent kiss, which she received with head
thrown back and, clasped in Evariste’s arms, felt
all her flesh melt like wax.

They went on talking a long time of themselves,
forgetful of the universe. Evariste abounded mainly
in vague, high thoughts, which filled Elodie with
ecstasy. She spoke sweetly of things of practical
utility and personal interest. Then, presently,
when she felt she could stay no longer, she rose with
a decided air, gave her lover the three red carna-

46

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

taons from the flower in her balcony and sprang
lightly into the cabriolet in which she had driven
there. It was a hired carriage, painted yellow,
hung on very high wheels and certainly had nothing
out of the common about it, or the coachman either.
But Gamelin was not in the habit of hiring carriages
and his friends were hardly more used to such an
indulgence. To see the great wheels whirling her
away gave him a strange pang and a painful pre-
sentiment assailed him; by a sort of hallucination
of the mind, the hack horse seemed to be carrying
Elodie away from him beyond the bounds of the
actual world and present time towards a city of
wealth and pleasure, towards abodes of luxury and
enjoyment, which he would never be able to enter.

The carriage disappeared, fivariste recovered
his calm by degrees; but a dull anguish remained
and he felt that the hours of tender abandonment
he had just lived would never be his again.

He returned by the Champs filysees, where
women in light summer dresses were sitting on
wooden chairs, talking or sewing, while their chil-
dren played under the trees. A woman selling
“ladies’ pleasures ,” — her box was shaped like a
drum — reminded him of the one he had spoken to
in the Allee des Veuves, and it seemed as if a whole
epoch of his life had elapsed between the two en-
counters. He crossed the Place de la Revolution.
In the Tuileries gardens he caught the distant roar
of a host of men, a sound of many voices shouting
in accord, so familiar in those great days of popu-
lar enthusiasm which the enemies of the Revolution
declared would never dawn again. He quickened
his pace as the noise grew louder and louder, reached
the Rue Honore and found it thronged with a crowd

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

47

of men and women yelling: “Vive la Republique!
Vive la Liberte!” The walls of the gardens, the
windows, the balconies, the very roofs were black
with lookers-on waving hats and handkerchiefs.
Preceded by a sapper, who cleared a way for the
procession, surrounded by Municipal Officers, Na-
tional Guards, gunners, gendarmes, huzzars, ad-
vanced slowly, high above the backs of the citizens,
a man of a bilious complexion, a wreath of oak-
leaves about his brow, his body wrapped in an old
green surtout with an ermine collar. The women
threw him flowers, while he cast about him the
piercing glance of his jaundiced eyes, as though, in
this enthusiastic multitude he was still searching
out enemies of the people to denounce, traitors to
punish. As he went by, Gamelin bent his head and
joining his voice to a hundred thousand others,
shouted his:

“Vive Marat!”

The triumphant hero entered the Hall of the
Convention like Fate personified. While the crowd
slowly dispersed Gamelin sat on a stone post in the
Rue Honore and pressed his hand over his heart to
check its wild beating. What he had seen filled him
with high emotion and burning enthusiasm.

He loved and worshipped Marat, who, sick and
fevered, his veins on fire, eaten up by ulcers, was
wearing out the last remnants of his strength in the
service of the Republic, and in his own poor house,
closed to no man, welcomed him with open arms,
conversed eagerly with him of public affairs, ques-
tioned him sometimes on the machinations of evil-
doers. He rejoiced that the enemies of the Just ,
conspiring for his ruin, had prepared his triumph;
he blessed the Revolutionary Tribunal, which ac-

48

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

quitting the Friend of the People had given back to
the Convention the most zealous and most immacu-
late of its legislators. Again his eyes could see the
head racked with fever, garlanded with the civic
crown, the features instinct with virtuous pride and
pitiless love, the worn, ravaged, powerful face, the
close-pressed lips, the broad chest, the strong man
dying by inches who, raised aloft in the living chariot
of his triumph, seemed to exhort his fellow-citizens:
“Be ye like me, — patriots to the death!”

The street was empty, darkening with the shadows
of approaching night; the lamplighter went by with
his cresset, and Gamelin muttered to himself:

“Yes, to the death!”

V

Y nine in the morning fivariste reached
the gardens of the Luxembourg, to
find £lodie already there seated on a
bench waiting for him.

It was a month ago they had ex-
changed their vows and since then
they had seen each other every day,
either at the Amour peintre or at the studio in the
Place de Thionville. Their meetings had been very
tender, but at the same time characterized by a
certain reserve that checked their expansiveness, —
a reserve due to the staid and virtuous temper of
the lover, a theist and a good citizen, who, while
ready to make his beloved mistress his own before
the law or with God alone for witness according as
circumstances demanded, would do nothing save
publicly and in the light of day. £lodie knew the
resolution to be right and honourable; but, despair-
ing of a marriage that seemed impossible from every
point of view and loath to outrage the prejudices of
society, she contemplated in her inmost heart a
liaison that could be kept a secret till the lapse of
time gave it sanction. She hoped one day to over-
come the scruples of a lover she could have wished
less scrupulous, and meantime, unwilling to post-
pone some necessary confidences as to the past, she
had asked him to meet her for a lover’s talk in a
lonely corner of the gardens near the Carthusian
Priory.

49

50

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

She threw him a tender look, took his hand
frankly, invited him to share the bench and speak-
ing slowly and thoughtfully:

“I esteem you too well, Evariste, to hide any-
thing from you. T believe myself worthy of you; I
should not be so were I not to tell you everything.
Hear me and be my judge. I have no act to reproach
myself with that is degrading or base, or even merely
selfish. I have only been weak and credulous. . . .
Do not forget, dear Evariste, the difficult circum-
stances in which I found myself. You know how it
was with me; I had lost my mother, my father,
still a young man, thought only of his own amuse-
ment and neglected me. I had a feeling heart,
nature has dowered me with a loving temper and a
generous soul; it was true she had not denied me a
firm will and a sound judgment, but in those days
what ruled my conduct was passion, not reason.
Alas! it would be the same again to-day, if the two
were not in harmony; I should be driven to give
myself to you, beloved, heart and soul, and for
ever!”

She expressed herself in firm, well-balanced
phrases. She had well thought over what she would
say, having long ago made up her mind to this con-
fession for several reasons — because she was nat-
urally candid, because she found pleasure in follow-
ing Rousseau’s example, and because, as she told
herself reasonably enough:

“One day Evariste must fathom a secret which is
known to others as well as myself. A frank avowal
is best. It is unforced and therefore to my credit,
and only tells him what some time or other he would
discover to my shame.”

Soft-hearted as she was and amenable to nature’s

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

51

promptings, she did not feel herself to be very much
to blame, and this made her confession the easier;
besides which, she had no intention of telling more
than was absolutely requisite.

“Ah!” she sighed, “why did I not know you,
Evariste, in the days when I was alone and for-
saken?” • ;

Gamelin had taken her request quite literally
when Elodie asked him to be her judge. Primed at
once by nature and the education of books for the
exercise of domestic justice, he sat ready to receive
Elodie’s admissions.

As she still hesitated, he motioned to her to pro-
ceed. Then she began speaking very simply:

“A young man, who with many defects of char-
acter combined some good qualities, and only showed
the latter, found me to his taste and courted me
with a perseverance that was surprising in such a
case; he was in the flower of his youth, full of charm
and the idol of a bevy of charming women who
made no attempt to hide their adoration. It was
not his good looks nor even his brilliance that ap-
pealed to me. . . . He touched my heart by the
tokens of true love he gave me, and I do think he
loved me truly. He was tender, impassioned. I
asked no pledge save of his heart, and alas! his
heart was fickle. ... I blame no one but myself;
it is my confession I am making, not his. I lay
nothing to his charge, for indeed he is become a
stranger to me. Ah! believe me, Evariste, I swear
it, he is no more to me than if he had never existed.”

She had finished, but Gamelin vouchsafed no
answer. He folded his arms, a steadfast, sombre
look settling in his eyes. His mistress and his sister
Julie were running together in his thoughts. Julie

52 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

too had hearkened to a lover; but, unlike, alto-
gether unlike, he thought, the unhappy Elodie, she
had let him have his will and carry her off, not mis-
led by the promptings of a tender heart, but to enjoy,
far from her home and friends, the sweets of luxury
and pleasure. He was a stern moralist; he had
condemned his sister and he was half inclined to
condemn his mistress.

Elodie resumed in a very pleading voice:

“I was full of Jean-Jacques’ philosophy; I be-
lieved men were naturally honest and honourable.
My misfortune was to have encountered a lover
who was not formed in the school of nature and
natural morality, and whom social prejudice, am-
bition, self-love, a false point of honour had made
selfish and treacherous.”

The words produced the effect she had calcu-
lated on. Gamelin’s eyes softened. He asked:

“Who was your seducer? Is he a man I know?”

“You do not know him.”

“ lell me his name.”

She had foreseen the question and was firmly
resolved not to answer it.

’ She gave her reasons:

“Spare me, I beseech you. For your peace of
mind as for my own, I have already said too much.”

Then, as he still pressed her:

“In the sacred name of our love, I refuse to tell
you anything to give you a definite notion of this
stranger: 1 will not give your jealousy a shape to
feed on; I will not bring a harassing shadow be-
tween you and me. I have not forgotten the man’s
name, but I will never let you know it.”

Gamelin insisted on knowing the name of the
seducer, — that was the word he employed all through,

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

53

for he felt no doubt Elodie had been seduced, cajoled,
trifled with. He could not so much as conceive any
other possibility, — that she had obeyed an overmas-
tering desire, an irresistible craving, listened to the
tempter’s voice in the shape of her own flesh and
blood; he could not find it credible that the fair
victim, a creature of hot passion and a fond heart,
had offered herself a willing sacrifice; to satisfy his
ideal, she must needs have been overborne by force
or fraud, constrained by sheer violence, caught in
snares spread about her steps on every side. He
questioned her in guarded terms, but with a close,
searching, embarrassing persistency. He asked her
how the liaison began, if it was long or short, tran-
quil or troubled, under what circumstances it was
broken off. And his enquiries came back again and
again to the means the fellow had used to cajole
her, as if these must surely have been extraordinary
and unheard of. But all his cross-examination was
in vain. She kept her own counsel with a gentle,
deprecatory obstinacy, her lips tightly pressed to-
gether and tears welling in her eyes.

Presently, however, Evariste having asked where
the man was now, she told him:

“He has left the Kingdom — France, I mean,” she
corrected herself in an instant.

“An emigre!” ejaculated Gamelin.

She looked at him, speechless, at once reassured
and disheartened to see him create in his own mind
a truth in accordance with his political passions and
of his own motion give his jealousy a Jacobin com-
plexion.

In actual fact Elodie’s lover was a little lawyer’s
clerk, a very pretty lad, half Adonis, half gutter-
snipe, whom she had adored and the thought of

54 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

whom, though three years had gone by since, still
thrilled her nerves. Rich old women were his par-
ticular game, and he deserted Elodie for a woman
of the world of a certain age who could and did
recompense his merits. Having, after the abolition
of offices, attained a post in the Mairie of Paris, he
was now a sansculotte dragoon and the hanger-on of
a ci-devant Countess.

“A noble! an emigre /” muttered Gamelin, whom
she took good care not to undeceive, never having
been desirous he should know the whole truth.
“And he deserted you like a dastard?”

She nodded in answer. He clasped her to his
heart:

“Dear victim of the vile corruption of monarchies,
my love shall avenge his villainy! Heaven grant, I
may meet the scoundrel! I shall not fail to know
him!”

She turned away, at one and the same time sad-
dened and smiling, — and disappointed. She would
fain have had him wiser in the lore of love, with
more of the natural man about him, more perhaps
even of the brute. She felt he forgave so readily
only because his imagination was cold and the secret
she had revealed awoke in him none of the mental
pictures that torture sensuous natures, — in a word,
that he saw her seduction solely under a moral and
social aspect.

They had risen, and while they walked up and
down the shady avenues of the gardens, he informed
her that he only esteemed her the more because she
had suffered wrong. Elodie entertained no such
high claims; however, take him as he was, she
loved him, and admired the brilliant artistic genius
she divined in him.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

55

As they left the Luxembourg, they came upon
crowds thronging the Rue de l’Egalite and the whole
neighbourhood of the Theatre de la Nation. There
was nothing to surprise them in this; for several
days great excitement had prevailed in the most
patriotic Sections; denunciations were rife against
the Orleans faction and the Brissotin plotters, who
were conspiring, it was said, to bring about the
ruin of Paris and the massacre of good Republicans.
Gamelin himself a short time back had signed a
petition from the Commune demanding the expul-
sion of the Twenty-one.

Just before passing under the arcade, joining the
theatre to the neighbouring house, they had to find
their way through a group of citizens en carmagnole
who were listening to a harangue from a young
soldier mounted on the top of the gallery. He
looked as beautiful as the Eros of Praxiteles in
his helmet of panther-skin. This fascinating war-
rior was charging the People's Friend with indo-
lence:

“ Marat, you are asleep," he was crying, “and the
federalists are forging fetters to bind us."

Hardly had Elodie cast eyes on the orator before
she turned rapidly to Evariste and begged him to
get her away. The crowd, she declared, frightened
her and she was afraid of fainting in the crush.

They parted in the Place de la Nation, swearing
an oath of eternal fidelity.

That same morning early the citoyen Brotteaux
had made the citoyenne Gamelin the magnificent
present of a capon. It would have been an act of
indiscretion for him to mention how he had come
by it; as a fact, he had it of a Dame de la Halle at

56

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

the Pointe Eustache for whom he sometimes acted
as amanuensis, and as everybody knows, these
“ Ladies of the Market” cherished Royalist sym-
pathies and were in correspondence with the emigres.
The citoyenne Gamelin had received the gift with
heartfelt gratitude. Such dainties were scarce ever
seen then; victuals grew dearer every day. The
people feared a famine; the aristocrats, they said,
wished it, and the “comer” makers were at work to
bring it about.

The citoyen Brotteaux, being invited to eat his
share of the capon at the midday dinner, appeared
in due course and congratulated his hostess on the
rich aroma of cooking that assailed his nostrils.
Indeed a noble smell of rich, savoury broth filled
the painter’s studio.

“You are very obliging, sir,” replied the good
dame, “To prepare the digestion for your capon, I
have made a vegetable soup with a slice of fat bacon
and a big beef bone. There’s nothing like a marrow-
bone, sir, to give soup a flavour.”

“The maxim does you honour, citoyenne ,” re-
turned the old man. And you will be doing wisely
to put back again to-morrow and the day after, all
the week, in fact, to put back again, I say, this
precious bone in the pot, which it will continue to
flavour. The wise woman of Panzoust always did
so; she used to make a soup of green cabbages with
a rind of rusty bacon and an old savorados . That is
what in her country, which is also mine, they call
the medullary bone, the most tasty and most suc-
culent of all bones.”

“This lady you speak of, sir,” remarked the cit-
oyenne Gamelin, “was she not rather a saving soul,
to make the same bone serve so many times over?”

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 57

“Oh! she lived in a small way,” explained Brot-
teaux, “she was poor, albeit a prophetess.”

At that moment, Evariste Gamelin returned, agi-
tated by the confession he had heard and deter-
mined to know who was Elodie’s betrayer, to avenge
at one and the same time the Republic’s wrortg and
his own on the miscreant.

After the usual greetings had been exchanged, the
citoyen Brotteaux resumed the thread of his dis-
course :

“It is seldom those who make a trade of foretell-
ing the future grow rich. Their impostures are too
soon found out and their trickery renders them
odious. But indeed we should be bound to detest
them much worse if they prophesied truly. A man’s
life would be intolerable if he knew what is to be-
fall him. He would be aware of calamities to come
and suffer their pains in advance, while he would
get no joy of present blessings whose end he would
foresee. Ignorance is a necessary condition of hu-
man happiness, and it must be owned that in most
cases we fulfil it well. We know almost nothing
about ourselves; absolutely nothing about our
neighbours. Ignorance constitutes our peace of
mind; self-deception our felicity.”

The citoyenne Gamelin set the soup on the table,
said the Benedicite and seated her son and her guest
at the board. She stood up herself to eat, declining
the chair the citoyen Brotteaux offered her beside
him; she said she knew what good manners required
of a woman.

VI

LN o’clock in the forenoon. Not a
breath of wind. It was the hottest
July ever known. In the narrow Rue
de Jerusalem a hundred or so citizens
of the Section were waiting in queue
at the baker’s door, under the eye of
four National Guards who stood at
ease smoking their pipes.

The National Convention had decreed the maxi-
mum , — and instantly corn and flour had disap-
peared. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, the
Parisians had to rise before daybreak if they wished
to eat. The crowd was lined up, men, women and
children rightly packed together, under a sky of
molten lead. The heat beat down on the rotting
foulness of the kennels and exaggerated the stench
of unwashed, sweating humanity. All were push-
ing, abusing their neighbours, exchanging looks
fraught with every sort of emotion one human being
can feel for another, — dislike, disgust, interest, at-
traction, indifference. Painful experience had taught
them there was not bread enough for everybody; so
the late comers were always trying to push forward,
while those who lost ground complained bitterly
and indignantly and vainly claimed their rights.
Women shoved and elbowed savagely to keep their
place or squeeze into a better. When the press grew
too intolerable, cries rose of “Stop pushing there!”
while each and all protested they could not help it

— it was someone else pushing them.

58

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

59

To obviate these daily scenes of disorder, the
officials appointed by the Section had conceived
the notion of fastening a rope to the shop-door which
each applicant held in his proper order; but hands
at such close quarters would come in contact on the
rope and a struggle would result. Whoever lost
hold could never recover it, while the disap-
pointed and the mischievously inclined sometimes
cut the cord. In the end the plan had to be aban-
doned.

On this occasion there was the usual suffocation
and confusion. While some swore they were dying,
others indulged in jokes or loose remarks; all abused
the aristocrats and federalists, authors of all the
misery. When a dog ran by, wags hailed the beast
as Pitt. More than once a loud slap showed that
some citoyenne in the line had resented with a vigor-
ous hand the insolence of a lewd admirer, while,
pressed close against her neighbour, a young servant
girl, with eyes half shut and mouth half open, stood
sighing in a sort of trance. At any word, or gesture,
or attitude of a sort to provoke the sportive humour
of the coarse-minded populace, a knot of young
libertines would strike up the Qa-ira in chorus, re-
gardless of the protests of an old Jacobin, highly in-
dignant to see a dirty meaning attached to a refrain
expressive of the Republican faith in a future of
justice and happiness.

His ladder under his arm, a billsticker appeared
to post up on a blank wall facing the baker’s a pro-
clamation by the Commune apportioning the rations
of butcher’s-meat. Passers-by halted to read the
notice, still sticky with paste. A cabbage vendor
going by, basket on back, began calling out in her
loud cracked voice:

62

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

of living beings seems to be to serve as food for other
beings destined to the same end. Murder is of
natural right; therefore, the penalty of death is
lawful, on condition it is exercised from no motives
either of virtue or of justice, but by necessity or to
gain some profit thereby. However, I must have
perverse instincts, for I sicken to see blood flow,
and this defect of character all my philosophy has
failed so far to correct.”

“Republicans,” answered Evariste, “are humane
and full of feeling. It is only despots hold the death
penalty to be a necessary attribute of authority.
The sovereign people will do away with it one day.
Robespierre fought against it, and all good patriots
were with him; the law abolishing it cannot be too
soon promulgated. But it will not have to be ap-
plied£till the last foe of the Republic has perished
beneath the sword of law and order.

Gamelin and Brotteaux had by this time a num-
ber of late comers behind them and amongst these
several women of the Section, including a stalwart,
handsome tricoteuse, in head-kerchief and sabots,
wearing a sword in a shoulder belt, a pretty girl
with a mop of golden hair and a very tumbled neck-
erchief, and a young mother, pale and thin, giving
the breast to a sickly infant.

The child, which could get no milk, was scream-
ing, but its voice was weak and stifled by its sobs.
Pitifully small, with a pallid, unhealthy skin and
inflamed eyes, the mother gazed at it with mingled
anxiety and grief.

“He is very young,” observed Gamelin, turning
to look at the unhappy infant groaning just at his
back, half stifled amid the crowd of new arrivals.

“He is six months, poor love! . . . His father is

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

63

with the army; he is one of the men who drove back
the Austrians at Conde. His name is Dumonteil
(Michel), a draper’s assistant by trade. He enlisted
at a booth they had established in front of the Hotel
de Ville. Poor lad, he was all for defending his coun-
try and seeing the world. . . . He writes telling me
to be patient. But pray, how am I to feed Paul
(he’s called Paul, you know) when I can’t feed
myself?”

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed the pretty girl with the
flaxen hair, “we’ve got another hour before us yet,
and to-night we shall have to repeat the same cere-
mony over again at the grocer’s. You risk your life
to get three eggs and a quarter of a pound of butter.”

“Butter!” sighed the citoyenne Dumonteil, “why,
it’s three months since I’ve seen a scrap!”

And a chorus of female voices rose, bewailing the
scarcity and dearness of provisions, cursing the
emigres and devoting to the guillotine the Commis-
saries of Sections who were ready to give good-for-
nothing minxes, in return for unmentionable serv-
ices, fat hens and four-pound loaves. Alarming
stories passed round of cattle drowned in the Seine,
sacks of flour emptied in the sewers, loaves of bread
thrown into the latrines. ... It was all those Roy-
alists, and Rolandists, and Brissotins, who were
starving the people, bent on exterminating every
living thing in Paris!

All of a sudden the pretty, fair-haired girl with
the rumpled neckerchief broke into shrieks as if her
petticoats were afire. She was shaking these vio-
lently and turning out her pockets, vociferating that
somebody had stolen her purse.

At news of the petty theft, a flood of indignation
swept over this crowd of poor folks, the same who

64 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

had sacked the mansions of the FauDourg Saint-
Germain and invaded the Tuileries without appro-
priating the smallest thing, artisans and housewives,
who would have burned down the Palace of Ver-
sailles with a light heart, but would have thought
it a dire disgrace if they had stolen the value of a
pin. The young rakes greeted the pretty girl’s loss
with some ribald jokes, that were immediately
drowned under a burst of public indignation. There
was some talk of instant execution — hanging the
thief to the nearest lamp-post, and an investigation
was begun, where everyone spoke at once and no-
body would listen to a word of reason. The tall
tricoteuse, pointing her finger at an old man, strongly
suspected of being an unfrocked monk, swore it was
the “Capuchin” yonder who was the cut-purse.
The crowd believed her without further evidence
and raised a shout of “Death! death!”

The old man so unexpectedly exposed to the pub-
lic vengeance was standing very quietly and soberly
just in front of the citoyen Brotteaux. He had all the
look, there was no denying it, of a ci-devant cleric. His
aspect was venerable, though the face was changed
and drawn by the terrors the poor man had suffered
from the violence of the crowd and the recollection
of the September days that were still vivid in his
imagination. The fear depicted on his features
stirred the suspicion of the populace, which is al-
ways ready to believe that only the guilty dread its
judgments, as if the haste and recklessness with
which it pronounces them were not enough to terrify
even the most innocent.

Brotteaux had made it a standing rule never to go
against the popular feeling of the moment, above
all when it was manifestly illogical and cruel, “be-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 65

cause in that case,” he would say, “the voice of the
people was the voice of God.” But Brotteaux proved
himself untrue to his principles; he asseverated that
the old man, whether he was a Capuchin or not,
could not have robbed the citoyenne , having never
gone near her for one moment.

The crowd drew its own conclusion, — the individ-
ual who spoke up for the thief was of course his
accomplice, and stern measures were proposed to
deal with the two malefactors, and when Gamelin
offered to guarantee Brotteaux’ honesty, the wisest
heads suggested sending him along with the two
others to the Sectional headquarters.

But the pretty girl gave a cry of delight; she had
found her purse again. The statement was received
with a storm of hisses, and she was threatened with
a public whipping, — like a Nun.

“Sir,” said the ex-monk, addressing Brotteaux,
“I thank you for having spoken in my defence. My
name is of no concern, but I had better tell you what
it is; I am called Louis de Longuemare. I am in
truth a Regular; but not a Capuchin, as those women
would have it. There is the widest difference; I
am a monk of the Order of the Barnabites, which
has given Doctors and Saints without number to the
Church. It is only a half-truth to refer its origin
to St. Charles Borromeo; we must account as the
true founder the Apostle St. Paul, whose cipher it
bears on its arms. I have been compelled to quit
my cloister, now headquarters of the Section du
Pont-Neuf, and adopt a secular habit.

“Nay, Father,” said Brotteaux, scrutinizing Mon-
sieur de Longuemare’s frock, your dress is token
enough that you have not forsworn your profes-
sion; to look at it, one might think you^had re-
5

06 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

formed your Order rather than forsaken it. It is
your good heart makes you expose yourself in these
austere habiliments to the insults of a godless
populace.”

“Yet I cannot very well,” replied the ex-monk,
“wear a blue coat, like a roisterer at a dance!”

“What I mention, Father, about your dress is by
way of paying homage to your character and put-
ting you on your guard against the risks you run.”

“On the contrary, sir, it would be much better to
inspirit me to confess my faith. For indeed, I am
only too prone to fear danger. I have abandoned
my habit, sir, which is a sort of apostasy; I would
fain not have deserted, had it been possible, the
House where God granted me for so many years
the grace of a peaceable and retired life. I got leave
to stay there, and I still continued to occupy my
cell, while they turned the church and cloister into
a sort of petty hotel de ville they called the Sec-
tion. I saw, sir, I saw them hack away the emblems
of the Holy Verity; I saw the name of the Apostle
Paul replaced by a convicted felon’s cap. Some-
times I was actually present at the confabulations
of the Section, where I heard amazing errors pro-
pounded. At last I quitted this place of profanation
and went to live on the pension of a hundred pistoles
allowed me by the Assembly in a stable that stood
empty, the horses having been requisitioned for the
service of the armies. There I sing Mass for a few
of the faithful, who come to the office to bear wit-
ness to the eternity of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

“For my part. Father,” replied the other, “if
you care to know my name, I am called Brotteaux,
and I was a publican in former days.”

“Sir,” returned the Pere Longuemare, “I was

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 67

aware by St. Matthew’s example that one may look
for good counsel from a publican.”

“Father, you are too obliging.”

“Citoyen Brotteaux,” remarked Gamelin, “pray
admire the virtues of the people, more hungry for
justice than for bread; consider how everyone here
is ready to lose his place to chastise the thief. These
men and women, victims of such poverty and priva-
tion, are of so stern a probity they cannot tolerate a
dishonest act.”

“It must indeed be owned,” replied Brotteaux,
“that in their hearty desire to hang the pilferer,
these folks were like to do a mischief to this good
cleric, to his champion and to his champion’s cham-
pion. Their avarice itself and their selfish eager-
ness to safeguard their own welfare were motives
enough; the thief in attacking one of them threat-
ened all; self-preservation urged them to punish
him. ... At the same time, it is like enough the
most part of these workmen and goodwives are hon-
est and keep their hands off other folk’s goods. From
the cradle these sentiments have been instilled in
them by their father and mother, who have whipped
them well and soundly and inculcated the virtues
through their backside.”

Gamelin did not conceal the fact from his old
neighbour that he deemed such language unworthy
of a philosopher.

“Virtue,” said he, “is natural to mankind; God
has planted the seed of it in the heart of mortals.”

Old Brotteaux was a sceptic and found in his
atheism an abundant source of self-satisfaction.

“I see this much, citoyen Gamelin, that, while a
Revolutionary for what is of this world, you are,
where Heaven is concerned, of a conservative, or

68

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

even a reactionary temper. Robespierre and Marat
are the same to you. For me, I find it strange that
Frenchmen, who will not put up with a mortal king
any longer, insist on retaining an immortal tyrant,
far more despotic and ferocious. For what is the
Bastille, or even the Chambre Ardente 1 * * beside Hell-
fire? Humanity models its gods on its tyrants, and
you, who reject the original, preserve the copy!”

“Oh! citoyen!” protested Gamelin, “are you not
ashamed to hold such language? how can you con-
found the dark divinities born of ignorance and fear
with the Author of Nature? Belief in a benevolent
God is necessary for morality. The Supreme Being
is the source of all the virtues and a man cannot be
a Republican if he does not believe in God. Robes-
pierre knew this, who, as we all remember, had the
bust of the philosopher Helvetius removed from the
Hall of the Jacobins, because he had taught French-
men the lessons of slavery by preaching atheism.
. . . I hope, at least, citoyen Brotteaux, that, as
soon as the Republic has established the worship of
Reason, you will not refuse your adhesion to so wise
a religion!”

“I love reason, but I am no fanatic in my love / 5
was Brotteaux’s answer. “Reason is our guide and
beacoi: -light; but when you have made a divinity
of it, it will blind you and instigate you to crime,”
— and he proceeded to develop his thesis, standing
both feet in the kennel, as he had once been used
to perorate, seated in one of Baron d’Holbach’s gilt
armchairs, which, as he was fond of saying, formed
the basis of natural philosophy.

1 Chambre Ardente , — under the ancien regime, a tribunal charged

with the investigation of heinous crimes and having power to burn

those found guilty.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

69

“Jean Jacques Rousseau,” he proceeded, “who
was not without talents, particularly in music, was
a scampish fellow who professed to derive his mo-
rality from Nature while all the time he got it from
the dogmas of Calvin. Nature teaches us to devour
each other and gives us the example of all the crimes
and all the vices which the social state corrects or
conceals. We should love virtue; but it is well to
know that this is simply and solely a convenient
expedient invented by men in order to live com-
fortably together. What we call morality is merely
a desperate enterprise, a forlorn hope, on the part
of our fellow creatures to reverse the order of the
universe, which is strife and murder, the blind in-
terplay of hostile forces. She destroys herself, and
the more I think of things, the more convinced I am
that the universe is mad. Theologians and philoso-
phers, who make God the author of Nature and the
architect of the universe, show Him to us as illogical
and ill-conditioned. They declare Him benevolent,
because they are afraid of Him, but they are forced
to admit that His acts are atrocious. They attribute
a malignity to him seldom to be found even in man-
kind. And that is how they get human beings to
adore Him. For our miserable race would never
lavish worship on just and benevolent deities from
which they would have nothing to fear; they would
feel only a barren gratitude for their benefits. With-
out purgatory and hell, your good God would be a
mighty poor creature.”

“Sir,” said the Pere Longuemare, “do not talk
of Nature; you do not know what Nature is.”

“Egad, I know it as well as you do, Father.”

“You cannot know it, because you have not re-
ligion, and religion alone teaches us what Nature

70

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

is, wherein it is good, and how it has been made evil
However, you must not expect me to answer you;
God has vouchsafed me, to refute your errors,
neither eloquence nor force of intellect. I should
only be afraid, by my inadequate replies, of giving
you occasion to blaspheme and further reasons for
hardening your heart. I feel a strong desire to help
you; yet the sole fruit of my importunate efforts
would be to . . ”

The discussion was cut short by a tremendous
shout coming from the head of the column to warn
the whole regiment of famished citizens that the
baker was opening his doors. The line began to
push forward, but very, very slowly. A National
Guard on duty admitted the purchasers one by one.
The baker, his wife and boy presided over the sale,
assisted by two Civil Commissaries. These, wear-
ing a tricoloured riband round the left arm, saw that
the customers belonged to the Section and were
given their proper share in proportion to the num-
ber of mouths to be filled.

The citoyen Brotteaux made the quest of pleasure
the one and only aim of life, holding that the reason
and the senses, the sole judges when gods there were
none, were unable to conceive any other. Accord-
ingly, finding the painter’s remarks somewhat over-
full of fanaticism, and the Monk’s of simplicity, to
please his taste, this wise man, bent on squaring his
behaviour with his views and relieving the tedium
of waiting, drew from the bulging pocket of his plum-
coloured coat his Lucretius, now as always his chief-
est solace and faithful comforter. The binding of
red morocco was chafed by hard wear, and the cito-
yen Brotteaux had judiciously erased the coat of
arms that once embellished it, — three islets or,

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

71

which his father the financier had bought for good
money down. He opened the book at the passage
where the poet philosopher, who is for curing men
of the futile and mischievous passion of love, sur-
prises a woman in the arms of her serving-women
in a state bound to offend all a lover’s suscepti-
bilities. The citoyen Brotteaux read the lines,
though not without casting a surreptitious glance
at the golden pate of the pretty girl in front of him
and enjoying a sniff of the heady perfume of the
little slut’s hot skin. The poet Lucretius was a
wise man, but he had only one string to his bow;
his disciple Brotteaux had several.

So he read on, taking two steps forward every
quarter of an hour. His ear, soothed by the grave
and cadenced numbers of the Latin Muse, was deaf
to the women’s scolding about the monstrous prices
of bread and sugar and coffee, candles and soap.
In this calm and unruffled mood he reached the
threshold of the bakehouse. Behind him, Evariste
Gamelin could see over his head the gilt cornsheaf
surmounting the iron grating that filled the fan-
light over the door.

When his turn came to enter the shop, he found
the hampers and lockers already emptied; the baker
handed him the only scrap of bread left, which did
not weigh two pounds. Evariste paid his money,
and the gate was slammed on his heels, for fear of
a*riot and the people carrying the place by storm.

But there was no need to fear; these poor folks,
trained to obedience alike by their old-time oppres-
sors and by their liberators of to-day, slunk off
with drooping heads and dragging feet.

As he reached the corner of the street, Gamelin
caught sight of the citoyenne Dumonteil, seated on

72 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

a stone post, her nursling in her arms. She sat there
quite still; her face was colourless and her tearless
eyes seemed to see nothing. The infant was suck-
ing her finger voraciously. Gamelin stood a while
in front of her, abashed and uncertain what to do.
She did not appear to see him.

He stammered something, then pulled out his
pocket-knife, a clasp-knife with a horn handle, cut
his loaf in two and laid half on the young mother’s
knee. She looked up at him in wonder; but he had
already turned the corner of the street.

On reaching home, Evariste found his mother
sitting at the window darning stockings. With a
light laugh he put his half of the bread in her hand.

“You must forgive me, mother dear; I was tired
out with standing about and exhausted by the heat,
and out in the street there as I trudged home,
mouthful by mouthful I have gobbled up half of
our allowance. There’s barely your share left,” —
and as he spoke, he made a pretence of shaking the
crumbs off his jacket.

VII

MPLOYING a very old-fashioned lo-
cution, the citoyenne Gamelin had
declared: “that by dint of eating
chestnuts they would be turning into
chestnuts.” As a matter of fact, on
that day, the 13th July, she and her
son had made their midday dinner
on a basin of chestnut porridge. As they were fin-
ishing this austere repast, a lady pushed open the
door and the room was flooded in an instant with
the splendour of her presence and the fragrance of
her perfumes, fivariste recognised the citoyenne
Rochemaure. Thinking she had mistaken the door
and meant her visit for the citoyen Brotteaux, her
friend of other days, he was already preparing to
point her out the ci-devant aristocrat’s garret or
perhaps summon Brotteaux and so spare an elegant
woman the task of scrambling up a mill-ladder; but
she made it clear at once that the citoyen fivariste
Gamelin and no other was the person she had come
to see by announcing that she was happy to find
him at home and was his servant to command.

They were not entirely strangers to each other,
having met more than once in David’s studio, in a
box at the Assembly Hall, at the Jacobins, at Venua’s
restaurant. On these occasions she had been struck
by his good looks and youth and interesting air.

Wearing a hat beribboned like a fairing and
plumed like the head-piece of a Representative on

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74 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

mission, the citoyenne Rochemaure was wigged,
painted, patched and scented. But her complexion
was young and fresh behind all these disguises;
these extravagant artificialities of fashion only be-
tokened a frantic haste to enjoy life and the fever-
ishness of these dreadful days when the morrow was
so uncertain. Her corsage, with wide facings and
enormous basques and all ablaze with huge steel
buttons, was blood-red, and it was hard to tell, so
aristocratic and so revolutionary at one and the
same time was her array, whether it was the colours
of the victims or of the headsman that she sported.
A young officer, a dragoon, accompanied her.

Dandling her long cane by its handle of mother-
o’-pearl, a tall, fine woman, of generous proportions
and ample bosom, she made the circuit of the studio,
and putting up to her grey eyes her double quizzing-
glasses of gold, examined the painter’s canvases
with many smiles and exclamations of delight, ad-
miring the handsome artist and flattering him in
hopes of a return in kind.

“What,” asked the citoyenne, “is that picture —
it is so nobly conceived, so touching — of a gentle,
beautiful woman standing by a young man lying
sick?”

Gamelin told her it was meant to represent Orestes
tended by his sister Electra, and that, had he been
able to finish it, it might perhaps have been the
least unsatisfactory of his works.

“The subject,” he went on to say, “is taken from
the Orestes of Euripides. I had read, in a transla-
tion of this tragedy made years ago, a scene that
filled me with admiration, — the one where the young
Electra, raising her brother on his bed of pain, wipes
away the froth that gathers on his lips, puts aside

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 75

the locks that blind his eyes and beseeches the
brother she loves to hearken to what she will tell
him while the Furies are at peace for the moment.
. . . As I read and re-read this translation, I seemed
to be aware of a kind of fog that shrouded the forms
of Greek perfection, a fog I could not drive away.
I pictured the original text to myself as more ner-
vous and pitched in a different accent. Feeling a
keen desire to get a precise idea of the thing, I went
to Monsieur Gail, who was the Professor of Greek
at the College de France (this was in ’91), and
begged him to expound the scene to me word by
word. He did what I asked, and I then saw that
the Ancients are much more simple and homely than
people think. Thus, for instance, Electra says to
Orestes: ‘Dear brother, what joy it gave me to see
thee sleep! Shall I help thee to rise?’ And Orestes
answers: ‘Yes, help me, take me in thy arms, and
wipe away the spume that still clings about my
mouth and eyes. Put thy bosom against mine and
part from my brow my tangled hair, for it blinds
my eyes. . . .’ My mind still full of this poetry, so
young and vivid, ringing with these simple, strong
phrases, I sketched the picture you see there,
citoyenne.”

The painter, who, as a rule, spoke so sparingly of
his works, waxed eloquent on the subject of this
one. At an encouraging gesture from the citoyenne
Rochemaure, who lifted her quizzing-glasses in
token of attention, he continued:

“Hennequin has depicted the madness of Orestes
in masterly fashion. But Orestes appeals to us still
more poignantly in his sorrow than when he is dis-
traught. What a fate was his! It was filial piety,
obedience to a sacred obligation, drove him to com-

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

mit his dreadful deed, — a sin the gods cannot but
pardon, but which men will never condone. To
avenge outraged justice, he has repudiated Nature,
has made himself a monster, has torn out his own
heart. But his spirit remains unbroken under the
weight of his horrible, yet innocent crime. . . . That
is what I would fain have exhibited in my group of
brother and sister.” He stepped up to the can-
vas and looked at it not without satisfaction.

“Parts of the picture,” he said, “are pretty nearly
finished; the head and arm of Orestes, for instance.”

“It is an admirable composition. . . . And
Orestes reminds me of you, citoyen Gamelin.”

“You think he is like me?” exclaimed the painter,
with a grave smile.

She took the chair Gamelin offered her. The
young dragoon stood beside her, his hand on the
back of the chair on which she sat. Which showed
plainly that the Revolution was an accomplished
fact, for under the ancien regime, no man would
ever, in company, have touched so much as with
the tip of a finger, the seat occupied by a lady. In
those days a gentleman was trained and broken in
to the laws of politeness, sometimes pretty hard
laws, and taught to understand that a scrupulous
self-restraint in public places gives a peculiar zest
to the sweet familiarity of the boudoir, and that to
lose your respectful awe of a woman, you must first
have that feeling.

Louise Masche de Rochemaure, daughter of a
Lieutenant of the King’s Hunt, widow of a Pro-
cureur and, for twenty years, the faithful mistress
of the financier Brotteaux des Ilettes, had fallen in
with the new ideas. She was to be seen, in July,
1790, digging the soil of the Champ de Mars. Her

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

77

strong inclination to side with the powers that be
had carried her readily enough along a political path
that started with the Feuillants and led by way of
the Girondins to end on the summit of the Mountain,
while at the same time a spirit of compromise, a
passion for conversion and a certain aptitude for
intrigue still attached her to the aristocratic and
anti-revolutionary party. She was to be met every-
where, — at coffee houses and theatres, fashionable
restaurants, gaming-saloons, drawing-rooms, news-
paper offices and ante-chambers of Committees.
The Revolution yielded her a hundred satisfactions,
— novelty and amusement, smiles and pleasures,
business ventures and profitable speculations. Com-
bining political with amorous intrigue, playing the
harp, drawing landscapes, singing ballads, dancing
Greek dances, giving supper parties, entertaining
pretty women, such as the Comtesse de Beaufort
and the actress Mademoiselle Descoings, presiding
all night long over a trcnte-et-un or biribi table and
an adept at rouge et noir y she still found time to be
charitable to her friends. Inquisitive and inter-
fering, giddy-pated and frivolous, she understood
men but knew nothing of the masses; as indiffer-
ent to the creed she professed as to the opinions she
felt bound to repudiate, understanding nothing
whatever of all that was happening in the country,
she was enterprising, intrepid, and full of audacity
from sheer ignorance of danger and an unbounded
confidence in the efficacy of her charms.

The soldier who escorted her was in the heyday of
youth. A brazen helmet decorated with a panther
skin and the crest set off with a crimson cock’s-
comb shaded his fresh young face and displayed a
long and terrific mane that swept his back. His red

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

jacket was cut short and square, barely reaching to
the waist, the better to show off his elegant figure.
In his girdle he carried an enormous sabre, the hilt
of which was a glittering eagle’s beak. A pair of
flapped breeches of sky blue moulded the fine
muscles of his legs and was braided in rich arabesques
of a darker blue on the thighs. He might have been
a dancer dressed for some warlike and dashing role,
in Achilles at Scyros or Alexander s Wedding-feast,
in a costume designed by a pupil of David with the
one idea of accentuating every line of the shape.

Gamelin had a vague recollection of having seen
him before. He was, in fact, the same young soldier
he had come upon a fortnight previously haranguing
the people from the arcades of the Theatre de la
Nation.

The citoyenne Rochemaure introduced him by
name:

“The citoyen Henry, Member of the Revolution-
ary Committee of the Section of the Rights of
Man.”

She had him always at her heels, — a mirror of
gallantry and a living and walking guarantee of
patriotism.

The citoyenne complimented Gamelin on his tal-
ents and asked him if he would be willing to design
a card for a protegee of hers, a fashionable milliner.
He would, of course, choose an appropriate motif , —
a woman trying on a scarf before a cheval glass, for
instance, or a young workwoman carrying a band-
box on her arm.

She had heard several artists mentioned as com-
petent to execute a little matter of the sort, —
Fragonard fils , young Ducis, as well as a certain
Prudhomme; but she would rather apply to the

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 79

citoyen Evariste Gamelin. However, she made no
definite proposal on this head and it was evident
she had mentioned the commission merely by way
of starting the conversation. In truth she had come
for something quite different. She wanted the
citoyen Gamelin to do her a favour; knowing he
was a friend of the citoyen Marat, she had come to
ask him to introduce her to the Friend of the Peo-
ple, with whom she desired an interview.

Gamelin replied that he was too insignificant an
individual to present her to Marat, besides which,
she had no need of anyone to be her sponsor; Marat,
albeit overwhelmed with business, was not the in-
accessible person he was said to be, — and, added
Gamelin :

“He will receive you, citoyenne, if you are in dis-
tress; his great heart makes him compassionate to
all who suffer. He will likewise receive you if you
have any revelation to make concerning the public
weal; he has vowed his days to the unmasking of
traitors.”

The citoyenne Rochemaure answered that she
would be happy to greet in Marat an illustrious citi-
zen, who had rendered great services to his coun-
try, who was capable of rendering greater still, and
that she was anxious to bring the legislator in ques-
tion into relation with friends of hers of good repute
and good will, philanthropists favoured by fortune
and competent to provide him with new means of
satisfying his ardent affection for humanity.

“It is very desirable,” she concluded, “to make
the rich co-operate in securing public prosperity.”

In actual fact, the citoyenne had promised the
banker Morhardt to arrange a dinner where he and
Marat should meet.

80 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

Morhardt, a Swiss like the Friend of the People,
had entered into a combination with several depu-
ties of the Convention, Julien (of Toulouse), De-
launay (of Angers) and the ex-Capuchin Chabot, to
speculate in the shares of the Compagnie des Indes.
The game was very simple, — to bring down the
price of these shares to 650 livres by proposing mo-
tions pointing in the direction of confiscation, in
order to buy up the greatest possible number at this
figure and then push them up to 4,000 or 5,000
livres by dint of proposals of a reassuring nature.
But for Chabot, Julien, Delaunay, their little ways
were too notorious, while suspicions were rife of
Lacroix, Fabre d’Eglantine, and even Danton. The
arch-speculator, the Baron de Batz, was looking for
new confederates in the Convention and had ad-
vised Morhardt to sound Marat.

This idea of the anti-revolutionary speculators
was not so extravagant as might have been supposed
at the first blush. It was always the way of these
gentry to form alliance with those in power at the
moment, and by virtue of his popularity, his pen,
his character, Marat was a power to be reckoned
with. The Girondists were near shipwreck; the
Dantonists, battered by the hurricane, had lost their
hold on the helm. Robespierre, the idol of the
people, was a man jealous of his scrupulous honesty,
full of suspicion, impossible to approach. The great
thing was to get round Marat, to secure his good
will against the day when he should be dictator —
and everything pointed to this consummation, —
his popularity, his ambition, his eagerness to rec-
ommend heroic measures. And it might be, after
all, Marat would re-establish order, the finances,
the prosperity of the country. More than once he

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

81

had risen in revolt against the zealots who were for
outbidding him in fanaticism; for some time past
he had been denouncing the demagogues as vehe-
mently as the moderates. After inciting the people
to sack the “cornerers’” shops and hang them over
their own counters, he was now exhorting the citi-
zens to be calm and prudent. He was growing into
an administrator.

In spite of certain rumours disseminated against
him as against all the other chiefs of the Revolution,
these pirates of the money-market did not believe
he could be corrupted, but they did know him to be
vain and credulous, and they hoped to win him over
by flattery and still more by a condescending friend-
liness which they looked upon as the most seductive
form of flattery from men like themselves. They
counted, thanks to him, on blowing hot and cold on
all the securities they might wish to buy and sell,
and making him serve their interests while supposing
himself to be acting solely for the public good.

Great as a go-between, albeit she was still of an
age for amours on her own account, the citoyenne
Rochemaure had made it her mission to bring to-
gether the legislator-journalist and the banker, and
in her extravagant imagination she already saw the
man of the underworld, the man whose hands were
yet red with the blood of the September massacres,
a partner in the game of the financiers whose agent
she was; she pictured him drawn by his very warmth
of feeling and unsophisticated candour into the
whirlpool of speculation, a recruit to the coterie
she loved of “corner” makers, contractors, foreign
emissaries, gamblers, and women of gallantry.

She insisted on the citoyen Gamelin taking her to
see the Friend of the People, who lived quite near.

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

in the Rue des Cordeliers, near the church. After
some little show of reluctance, the painter acceded
to the citoyenne 9 s wishes.

The dragoon Henry was invited to join them in
the visit, but declined, declaring he meant to keep
his liberty of action, even towards the citoyen Marat,
who, he felt no doubt, had rendered services to the
Republic, but was weakening nowadays; had he
not, in his news sheet, counselled resignation as the
proper thing for the people of Paris?

And the young man, in a sweet voice, broken by
long-drawn sighs, deplored the fate of the Repub-
lic, betrayed by the men in whom she had put her
trust, — Danton rejecting the notion of a tax on the
rich, Robespierre opposing the permanence of the
Sections, Marat, whose pusillanimous counsels were
paralyzing the enthusiasm of the citizens.

“Ah!” he cried, “how feeble such men appear
beside Leclerc and Jacques Roux! . . . Roux! Le-
clerc! ye are the true friends of the people!”

Gamelin did not hear these remarks, which would
have angered him; he had gone into the next room
to don his blue coat.

“You may well be proud of your son,” observed
the citoyenne Rochemaure, addressing the citoyenne
Gamelin. “He is a great man; talent and charac-
ter both make him so.”

In answer, the widow Gameljn gave a good account
of her son, yet without making much boast of him
before a lady of high station, for she had been taught
in her childhood that the first duty of the lowly is
humility towards the great. She was of a com-
plaining bent, having indeed only too good cause
and finding in such jeremiads a salve for her griefs.
She was garrulous in her revelations of all the hard-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 83

ships she had to bear to any whom she supposed
in a position to relieve them, and Madame de Roche-
maure seemed to belong to that class. She made
the most, therefore, of this favourable opportunity
and told a long and breathless story of their dis-
tresses, — how mother and son were both dying of
slow starvation. Pictures could not be sold any
more; the Revolution had killed business dead.
Victuals were scarce and too dear for words

The good dame poured out her lamentations with
all the loose-lipped volubility her halting tongue
was capable of, so as to get them all finished by the
time her son, whose pride would not brook such
whining, should reappear. She was bent on attaining
her object in the shortest possible time, — that of
touching a lady whom she deemed rich and influ-
ential, and enlisting her sympathy in her boy's
future. She felt sure that Evariste's good looks
were an asset on her side to move the heart of a
well-born lady. And so they were; the citoyenne
Rochemaure proved tender-hearted and was melted
to think of Evariste's and his mother's sufferings.
She made plans to alleviate them; she had rich men
amongst her friends and would get them to buy the
artist's pictures.

“The truth is," she added, with a smile, “there
is still money in France, but it keeps in hiding."

Better still, now Art was ruined, she would ob-
tain Evariste a post in Morhardt's bank or with the
Brothers Perregaux, or a place as clerk in the office
of an army contractor.

Then she reflected that this was not what a man
of his character needed; and, after a moment's
thought, she nodded in sign that she had hit the
nail on the head :

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

“ There are still several jurymen left to be ap-
pointed on the Revolutionary Tribunal. Juryman,
magistrate, that is the thing to suit your son. I
have friendly relations with the Committee of Pub-
lic Safety. I know Robespierre the elder person-
ally; his brother frequently sups at my house. I
will speak to them. I will get a word said to Mon-
tane, Dumas, Fouquier.”

The citoyenne Gamelin, bursting with excitement
and gratitude, put a finger to her lip; Evariste was
coming back into the studio.

He escorted the citoyenne Rochemaure down the
gloomy staircase, the steps of which, whether of
wood or tiled, were coated with an ancient layer of
dirt.

On the Pont-Neuf, where the sun, now near its
setting, threw a lengthened shadow from the pedes-
tal that had borne the Bronze Horse and was now
gay with the National colours, a crowd of men and
women of the people gathered in little groups were
listening to some tale that was being told them.
Consternation reigned and a heavy silence, broken
at intervals by groans and fierce cries. Many were
making off at a rapid pace in the direction of the
Rue de Thionville, erstwhile Rue Dauphine; Game-
lin joined one of these groups and heard the news —
that Marat had just been assassinated.

Little by little the tidings were confirmed and
particulars became known; he had been murdered
in his bath by a woman who had come expressly
from Caen to commit the crime.

Some thought she had escaped; but the majority
declared she had been arrested.

There they stood like sheep without a shepherd,
thinking sadly:

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

85

u Marat, the tender-hearted, the humane, Marat
our benefactor, is no longer there to guide us, Marat
who was never deceived, who saw through every
subterfuge and never feared to reveal the truth! . . .
What can we do, what is to become of us? We have
lost our adviser, our champion, our friend.” They
knew very well whence the blow had come, and who
had directed the woman’s arm. They groaned
aloud : * '

“ Marat has been struck down by the same crim-
inal hands that are bent on our extermination. His
death is the signal for the slaughter of all good
patriots.”

Different reports were current, as to the circum-
stances of the tragic event and the last words of the
victim; endless questions were asked concerning
the assassin, all that anyone knew was that it was a
young woman sent by those traitors, the federalists.
Baring teeth and nails, the citoyennes devoted the
culprit to condign punishment; deeming the guil-
lotine too merciful a death, they demanded this
monster of inquity should be scourged, broken on
the wheel, torn limb from limb, and racked their
brains to invent new tortures.

An armed body of National Guards was haling
to the Section headquarters a man of determined
mien. His clothes were in tatters, and streams of
blood trickled down his white face. He had been
overheard saying that Marat had earned his fate
by his constant incitements to pillage and massacre,
and it was only with great difficulty that the Guards
had saved him from the fury of the populace. A
hundred fingers pointed him out as the accomplice
of the assassin, and threats of death followed him
as he was led away.

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

Gamelin was stunned by the blow. A few hot
tears blistered his burning eyes. With the grief he
felt as a disciple mingled solicitude for the popular
idol, and these combined feelings tore at his heart-
strings. He thought to himself:

“After Le Peltier, after Bourdon, Marat! ... I
foresee the fate of the patriots; massacred on the
Champ de Mars, at Nancy, at Paris, they will perish
one and all.” And he thought of Wimpfen, the trai-
tor, who only a while before was marching on Paris,
and who, had he not been stopped at Vernon, by the
gallant patriots, would have devoted the heroic city
to fire and slaughter.

And how many perils still remained, how many
criminal designs, how many treasonable plots, which
only Marat’s perspicacity and vigilance could un-
ravel and foil! Now he was dead, who was there
to denounce Custine loitering in idleness in the Camp
of Gesar and refusing to relieve Valenciennes, Biron
tarrying inactive in the Lower Vendee letting Saumur
be taken and Nantes blockaded, Dillon betraying
the Fatherland in the Argonne? . . .

Meantime, all about him, rose momentarily higher
the sinister cry:

“Marat is dead; the aristocrats have killed him!”

As he was on his way, his heart bursting with
grief and hate and love, to pay a last mark of re-
spect to the martyr of liberty, an old country-
woman, wearing the coif of the Limousin peasantry,
accosted him to ask if the Monsieur Marat who had
been murdered was not Monsieur le Cure Mara, of
Saint-Pierre-de-Queyroix.

VIII

T was the eve of the Festival, a calm,
bright evening, and Elodie hanging
on Evariste’s arm, was strolling with
him about the Champ de la Federa-
tion. Workmen were hastily complet-
ing their task of erecting columns,
statues, temples, a “mountain,” an
altar of the Fatherland. Huge symbolic figures,
Hercules (representing the people) brandishing his
club, Nature suckling the Universe from her in-
exhaustible breasts, were rising at a moment’s
notice in the capital that, tortured by famine and
fear, was listening for the dreaded sound of the
Austrian cannon on the road from Meaux. La
Vendee was making good its check before Nantes
by a series of startling victories. A ring of fire and
flame and hate was drawn about the great revolu-
tionary city.

And meantime, she was preparing a superb wel-
come, like the sovereign state of a vast empire, for
the deputies of the primary Assemblies which had
accepted the Constitution. Federalism was on its
knees; the Republic, one and indivisible, would
surely vanquish all its enemies.

Waving his arm towards the thronged expanse:

“There it was,” cried Evariste, “that on the 17th
July, ’91, the infamous Bailly ordered the people
to be shot down at the foot of the altar of the
fatherland. Passavant, the grenadier, who witnessed
the massacre, returned to his house, tore his coat

87

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from his back and cried: ‘I have sworn to die with
Liberty; Liberty is no more, and I fulfil my oath/
— and blew out his brains.”

All this time artists and peaceful citizens were
examining the preparations for the festival, their
faces showing as joyless a joy in life as their lives
were dull and joyless; to their minds the mightiest
events shrank into insignificance and grew as in-
sipid as they were themselves. Couple by couple
they went, carrying in their arms or holding by the
hand or letting them run on in front children as un-
prepossessing as their parents and promising to
grow up no whit happier, who in due course would
give birth to children of their own as poor in spirit
and looks as they. Yet now and again a young girl
would pass, tall and fair and desirable, rousing in
young men a not ignoble passion to possess, and in
the old regret for the bliss they had missed.

Near the ficole Militaire Evariste pointed out to
his companion the Egyptian statues designed by
David on Roman models of the age of Augustus,
and they overheard a Parisian, an old man with
powdered hair, ejaculate to himself:

“Egad! you might think yourself on the banks
of the Nile!”

It was three days since Elodie had seen her lover,
and serious events had befallen meantime at the
Amour peintre. The citoyen Blaise had been de-
nounced to the Committee of General Security for
fraudulent dealings in the matter of supplies to the
armies. Fortunately for himself, the print-dealer
was well known in his Section; the Committee of
Surveillance of the Section des Piques had stood
guarantee of his patriotism with the general com-
mittee and had completely justified his conduct.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 89

This alarming incident Elodie now recounted in
trembling accents, concluding:

“We are quiet now, but the alarm was a hot one.
A little more and my father would have been clapped
in prison. If the danger had lasted a few hours
more, I should have come to you, Evariste, to make
interest for him among your influential friends.”

Evariste vouchsafed no reply to this, but Elodie
was very far from realizing all his silence portended.

They went on hand in hand along the banks of
the river, discoursing of their mutual fondness in
the phrases of Julie and Saint-Preux; the good Jean-
Jacques gave them the colours to paint and prank
their love withal.

The Municipality of Paris had wrought a miracle,
— abundance reigned for a day in the famished city.
A fair was installed on the Place des Invalides , beside
the Seine, where hucksters in booths sold sausages,
saveloys, chitterlings, hams decked with laurels,
Nanterre cakes, gingerbreads, pancakes, four-pound
loaves, lemonade and wine. There were stalls also
for the sale of patriotic songs, cockades, tricolour
ribands, purses, pinchbeck watch-chains and all
sorts of cheap gewgaws. Stopping before the dis-
play of a petty jeweller, Evariste selected a silver
ring having a head of Marat in relief with a silk
handkerchief wound about the brows, and put it on
Elodie’s finger.

The same evening Gamelin proceeded to the Rue
de l’Arbre-Sec to call on the citoyenne Rochemaure,
who had sent for him on pressing business. She
received him in her bedchamber, reclining on a
couch in a seductive dishabille.

While the citoyenne’ s attitude expressed a volup-

90 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

tuous languor, everything about her spoke of her
accomplishments, her diversions, her talents, — a
harp beside an open harpsichord, a guitar on a
chair, an embroidering frame with a square of satin
stretched on it, a half-finished miniature on a table
among papers and books, a bookcase in dire dis-
order as if rifled by the hand of a fair reader as eager
to know as to feel.

She gave him her hand to kiss, and addressed him:

“Greeting, sir juryman! . . . This very day
Robespierre the elder gave me a letter in your favour
to be handed to the President Herman, a very well
turned letter, pretty much to this effect:

“I bring to your notice the citoyen Gamelin, com-
mendable alike for his talents and for his patriot-
ism. I have made it my duty to make known to
you a patriot whose principles are good and his
conduct steadfast in the right line of revolution.
You will not let slip the opportunity of being useful
to a Republican. . . .” This letter I carried there
and then to the President Herman, who received
me with an exquisite politeness and signed your
appointment on the spot. The thing is done.”

After a moment’s pause:

“ Citoyenne” said Gamelin, “though I have not
a morsel of bread to give my mother, I swear on
my honour I accept the duties of a juror only to
serve the Republic and avenge her on her foes.”

The citoyenne thought this but a cold way of
expressing gratitude and considered the sentiment
high-flown. The young man was no adept, she
suspected, at graceful courtesies. But she was too
great an admirer of youth not to excuse some little
lack of polish. Gamelin was a handsome fellow,
and that was merit enough in her eyes. “We will

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91

form him,” she said to herself. So she invited him
to her suppers to which she welcomed her friends
every evening after the theatre.

“You will meet at my house men of wit and
talent, — Elleviou, Talma, the citoyen Vigee, who
turns bouts-rimes with a marvellous aptitude. The
citoyen Francois read us his ‘Pamela* the other day,
the piece rehearsing at the present moment at the
Theatre de la Nation. The style is elegant and
chaste, as everything is that comes from the citoyen
Francois’ pen. The plot is touching; it brought
tears to all our eyes. It is the young citoyenne Lange
who is to take the part of ‘Pamela.’

“I believe it if you say so, citoyenne ,” answered
Gamelin, “but the Theatre de la Nation is scarcely
National and it is hard on the citoyen Francois that
his works should be produced on the boards de-
graded by the contemptible verses of a Laya; the
people has not forgotten the scandal of the Ami des
Lois ”

“Nay, citoyen Gamelin, say what you will of
Laya; he is none of my friends.”

It was not purely out of kindness that the citoyenne
had employed her credit to get Gamelin appointed
to a much envied post; after what she had done for
him and what peradventure she might come to do
for him in the future, she counted on binding him
closely to her interests and in that way securing
for herself a protector connected with a tribunal
she might one day or another have to reckon with;
for the fact is, she was in constant correspondence
with the French provinces and foreign countries,
and at that date such a circumstance was ground
enough for suspicion.

“Do you often go to the theatre, citoyen ?”

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

As she asked the question, Henry, the dragoon,
entered the room, looking more charming than the
youthful Bathyllus. A brace of enormous pistols
was passed through his belt.

He kissed the fair citoyenne’s hand. Turning to him:

“There stands the citoyen Evariste Gamelin,”
she said, “for whose sake I have spent the day at
the Committee of General Security, and who is an
ungrateful wretch. Scold him for me.”

“Ah! citoyenne,” cried the young soldier, “you
have seen our Legislators at the Tuileries. What
an afflicting sight! Is it seemly the Representatives
of a free people should sit beneath the roof of a
despot? The same lustres that once shone on the
plots of Capet and the orgies of Antoinette now
illumine the deliberations of our law-makers. ’Tis
enough to make Nature shudder.”

“Pray, congratulate the citoyen Gamelin,” was
all her answer, “he is appointed juryman on the
Revolutionary Tribunal.”

“My compliments, citoyen /” said Henry. “I
am rejoiced to see a man of your character invested
with these functions. But, to speak truth, I have
small confidence in this systematic justice, set up
by the moderates of the Convention, in this com-
plaisant Nemesis that is considerate to conspirators
and merciful to traitors, that hardly dares strike a
blow at the Federalists and fears to summon the
Austrian to the bar. No, it is not the Revolution-
ary Tribunal will save the Republic. They are very
culpable, the men who, in the desperate situation
we are in, have arrested the flowing torrent of pop-
ular justice!”

“Henry,” interrupted the citoyenne Rochemaure,
“pass me that scent bottle, please. . .

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 03

On reaching home, Gamelin found his mother
and old Brotteaux playing a game of piquet by the
light of a smoky tallow-candle. At the moment the
old woman was calling “sequence of kings” with-
out the smallest scruple.

When she heard her son was appointed juryman,
she kissed him in a transport of triumph, thinking
what an honour it was for both of them and that
henceforth they would have plenty to eat every
day.

“I am proud and happy,” she declared, “to be
the mother of a juryman. Justice is a fine thing,
and of all the most necessary; without justice the
weak would be harassed every moment of their
lives. And I think you will give right judgment,
Evariste, my own boy; for from a child I have
found you just and kind-hearted in all concerns.
You could never endure wrong-doing and always
tried what you could to hinder violence. You com-
passionated the unfortunate and that is the finest
jewel in a juror’s crown. . . . But tell me, Evariste,
how are you dressed in your grand tribunal?”

Gamelin informed her that the judges wore a hat
with black plumes, but that the jury had no special
costume, that they were dressed in their every-day
attire.

“It would be better,” returned the good woman,
“if they wore wig and gown; it would inspire more
respect. Though you are mostly dressed carelessly,
you are a handsome man and you set off your
clothes; but the majority of men need some fine
feathers to make them look imposing; yes, the jury
should have wigs and gowns.”

The citoyenne had heard say that the duties of a
juror of the Tribunal carried a salary; and she had

94

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

no hesitation in asking the question whether the
emoluments were enough to live respectably on,
for a juryman, she opined, ought to cut a good
figure in the world.

She was pleased to hear that each juror received
an allowance of eighteen livres for every sitting and
that the multiplicity of crimes against the security
of the State obliged the court to sit very frequently.

Old Brotteaux gathered up the cards, rose from
the table and addressing Gamelin:

“Citoyen,” he said, “y° u are invested with an
august and redoubtable office. I congratulate you
on lending the light of your integrity to a tribunal
more trustworthy and less fallible perhaps than any
other, because it searches out good and evil, not in
themselves and in their essence, but solely in rela-
tion to tangible interests and plain and obvious
sentiments. You will have to determine betwixt
hate and love, which is done spontaneously, not
betwixt truth and falsehood, to discriminate which
is impossible for the feeble mind of man. Giving
judgment after the impulses of your heart, you will
run no risk of mistake, inasmuch as the verdict will
be good provided it satisfy the passions that are
your sacred law. But, all the same, if I was your
President, I should imitate Bridoie, I should appeal
to the arbitrament of the dice. In matters of jus-
tice it is still the surest plan.”

IX

VARISTE GAMELIN was to enter
on his duties on the 14th September,
when the reorganization of the Tri-
bunal was complete, according to
which it was henceforth subdivided
into four sections with fifteen jurors
for each. The prisons were full to
overflowing; the Public Prosecutor was working
eighteen hours a day. Defeats in the field, revolts
in the provinces, conspiracies, plots, betrayals, the
Convention had one panacea for them all,— terror.
The Gods were athirst.

The first act of the new juror was to pay a visit
of ceremony to the President Herman, who charmed
him by the amiability of his conversation and the
courtesy of his bearing. A compatriot and friend
of Robespierre’s, whose sentiments he shared, he
showed every sign of a feeling and virtuous temper.
He was deeply attached to those humane sentiments,
too long foreign to the heart of our judges, that re-
dound to the everlasting glory of a Dupaty and a
Beccaria. He looked with complacency on the
greater mildness of modern manners as evidenced,
in judicial matters, by the abolition of torture and
of ignominious or cruel forms of punishment. He
was rejoiced to see the death penalty, once so reck-
lessly inflicted and employed till quite lately for
the repression of the most trifling offences, applied
less frequently and reserved for heinous crimes.

95

96

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

For his own part, he agreed with Robespierre and
would gladly have seen it abolished altogether, except
only in cases touching the public safety. At the
same time, he would have deemed it treason to the
State not to adjudge the punishment of death for
crimes against the National Sovereignty.

All his colleagues were of like mind; the old
Monarchical idea of reasons of State still inspired
the Revolutionary Tribunal. Eight centuries of
absolute power had moulded the magisterial con-
science, and it was by the principles of Divine Right
that the Court even now tried and sentenced the
enemies of Liberty.

The same day Evariste Gamelin sought an inter-
view with the Public Prosecutor, the citoyen Fou-
quier, who received him in the Cabinet where he used
to work with his clerk of the court. He was a
sturdily built man, with a rough voice, catlike eyes,
bearing in his pock-marked face and leaden complex-
ion marks of the mischief wrought by a sedentary
and indoor life on a vigorous constitution adapted to
the open air and violent exercise. Towering piles of
papers shut him in like the walls of a tomb, and it
was plain to see he was in his element amid all these
dreadful documents that seemed like to bury him
alive. His conversation was that of a hard-working
magistrate, a man devoted to his task and whose
mind never left the narrow groove of his official du-
ties. His fiery breath reeked of the brandy he took to
keep up his strength; but the liquor seemed never
to fly to his brain, so clear-headed, albeit entirely
commonplace, was every word he uttered.

He lived in a small suite of rooms in the Palais
de Justice with his young wife, who had given him
twin boys. His wife, an aunt Henriette and the

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

97

maid-servant Pelagie made up the whole household.
He was good and kind to these women. In a word,
he was an excellent person in his family and pro-
fessional relations, with a scarcity of ideas and a
total lack of imagination.

Gamelin could not help being struck unpleasantly
by the close resemblance in temper and ways of
thought between the new magistrates and their
predecessors under the old regime. In fact, they
were of the old regime; Herman had held the office
of Advocate General to the Council of Artois; Fou-
quier was a former Procureur at the Chatelet. They
had preserved their character, whereas Gamelin be-
lieved in a Revolutionary palingenesis.

Quitting the precincts of the court, he passed
along the great gallery of the Palace and halted in
front of the shops where articles of every sort and
kind were exposed for sale in the most attractive
fashion. Standing before the citoyenne Tenot’s
stall, he turned over sundry historical, political, and
philosophical works: — “The Chains of Slavery,”
“An Essay on Despotism,” “The Crimes of Queens.”
“Very good!” he thought, “here is Republican
stuff!” and he asked the woman if she sold a great
many of these books. She shook her head:

“The only things that sell are songs and ro-
mances,” — and pulling a duodecimo volume out of
a drawer:

“Here,” she told him, “here we have something
good.”

Evariste read the title: “La Religieuse en chemise,”
“The Nun in dishabille!”

Before the next shop he came upon Philippe
Desmahis, who, with a tender, conquering-hero air,
among the citoyenne Saint-Jorre’s perfumes and
7

98

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powders and sachets, was assuring the fair trades-
woman of his undying love, promising to paint her
portrait and begging her to vouchsafe him a mo-
ment’s talk that evening in the Tuileries gardens.
There was no resisting him; persuasion sat on his
lips and beamed from his eye. The citoyenne Saint-
Jorre was listening without a word, her eyes on the
ground, only too ready to believe him.

Wishing to familiarize himself with the awful
duties imposed on him, the new juror resolved to
mingle with the throng and look on at a case before
the Tribunal as a member of the general public.
He climbed the great stairs on which a vast crowd
was seated as in an amphitheatre and pushed his way
into the ancient Hall of the Parlement of Paris.

This was crammed to suffocation; some General
or other was taking his trial. For in those days, as
old Brotteaux put it, “the Convention, copying the
example of His Britannic Majesty’s Government,
made a point of arraigning beaten Generals, in de-
fault of traitorous Generals, the latter taking good
care not to stand their trial. Not that a beaten
General,” Brotteaux would add, “is necessarily
criminal, for in the nature of things there must be
one in every battle. But there’s nothing like con-
demning a General to death for giving encourage-
ment to others.”

Several had already appeared before the Tri-
bunal; they were all alike, these empty-headed,
opinionated soldiers with the brains of a sparrow
in an ox’s skull. This particular commander was
pretty nearly as ignorant of the sieges and battles
of his own campaign as the magistrates who were
questioning him; both sides, prosecution and de-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 99

fence, were lost in a fog of effectives, objectives,
munitions and ammunitions, marches and counter-
marches. But the mass of citizens listening to these
obscure and never-ending details could see behind
the half-witted soldier the bare and bleeding breast
of the fatherland enduring a thousand deaths; and
by look and voice urged the jurymen, sitting quietly
on their bench, to use their verdict as a club to fell
the foes of the Republic.

Evariste was firmly convinced of one thing, — what
they had to strike at in the pitiful creature was the
two dread monsters that were battening on the
fatherland, revolt and defeat. What a to-do to dis-
cover if this particular soldier was innocent or guilty!
When La Vendee was recovering heart, when Tou-
lon was surrendering'to the enemy, when the army
of the Rhine was recoiling before the victors of
Mayence, when the Army of the North, cowering
in Caesar’s Camp, might be taken at a blow by the
Imperialists, the English, the Dutch, now masters
of Valenciennes, the one important thing was to
teach the Generals of the Republic to conquer or
to die. To see yonder feeble-witted muddle-pated
veteran losing himself under cross-examination
among his maps as he had done before in the plains
of Northern France, Gamelin longed to yell “death!
death!” with the rest, and fled from the Hall of
Audience to escape the temptation.

At the meeting of the Section, the newly appointed
juryman received the congratulations of the Presi-
dent Olivier, who made him swear on the old high
altar of the Barnabites, now altar of the fatherland,
to stifle in his heart, in the sacred name of human-
ity, every human weakness.

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

Gamelin, with uplifted right hand, invoked as
witness of his oath the august shade of Marat,
martyr of Liberty, whose bust had lately been set
up against a pillar of the erstwhile church, facing
that of Le Peltier.

There was some applause, interrupted by cries of
protest. The meeting was a stormy one; at the
entrance of the nave stood a group of members of
the Section, armed with pikes and shouting clamor-
ously:

“It is anti-republican,” declared the President,
“to carry arms at a meeting of free citizens,” — and
he ordered the muskets and pikes to be deposited
there and then in the erstwhile sacristy.

A hunchback, with blazing eyes and lips drawn
back so as to show the teeth, the citoyen Beauvisage,
of the Committee of Vigilance, mounted to the pul-
pit, now become the speakers’ tribune and sur-
mounted by a red cap of liberty.

“The Generals are betraying us,” he vociferated,
“and surrendering our armies to the enemy. The
Imperialists are pushing forward their cavalry
around Peronne and Saint-Quentin. Toulon has
been given up to the English, who are landing four-
teen thousand men there. The foes of the Repub-
lic are busy with plots in the very bosom of the
Convention. In the capital conspiracies without
number are afoot to deliver the Austrian. At this
very moment while I speak there runs a rumour
that the Capet brat has escaped from the Temple
and is being borne in triumph to Saint-Cloud by
those who would fain re-erect the tyrant’s throne
in his favour. The dearness of food, the deprecia-
tion of the assignats are the direct result of ma-
noeuvres carried out in our own homes, beneath our

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

101

very eyes, by the agents of the foreigners. In the
name of public safety I call upon the new juryman,
our fellow-citizen, to show no pity to conspirators
and traitors.”

As he left the tribune, cries rose among the audi-
ence: “Down with the Revolutionary Tribunal!
Down with the Moderates!”

• A stout, rosy-faced man, the citoyen Dupont
senior, a joiner living in the Place de Thionville,
mounted the Tribune, announcing that he wished
to ask a question of the new juror. Then he de-
manded of Gamelin what attitude he meant to take
up in the matter of the Brissotins and of the widow
Capet.

Evariste was timid and unpractised in public
speaking. But indignation gave him eloquence.
He rose with a pale face and said in a voice of sup-
pressed emotion:

“I am a magistrate. I am responsible to my
conscience only. Any promise I might make you
would be against my duty, which is to speak in the
Court and hold my peace elsewhere. I have ceased
to know you. It is mine to give judgment; I know
neither friends nor enemies.”

The meeting, made up like all meetings of divers
elements and subject to sudden and incalculable
moods, approved these sentiments. But the citoyen
Dupont returned to the charge; he could not for-
give Gamelin for having secured a post he had
coveted himself.

“I understand,” he said, “I even approve the
juror’s scruples. They say he is a patriot; it is for
him to examine his conscience and see if it permits
him to sit on a tribunal intended to destroy the
enemies of the Republic and resolved to spare them.

102 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

There are circumstances in which a good citizen is
bound to repudiate all complicity. Is it not averred
that more than one juror of this tribunal has let
himself be corrupted by the gold of the accused, and
that the President Montane falsified the procedure
to save the head of the woman Corday?”

At the words the hall resounded with vehement
applause. The vaults were still reverberating with
the uproar when Fortune Trubert mounted the
tribune. He had grown thinner than ever in the
last few months. His face was pale and the cheek-
bones seemed ready to pierce the reddened skin;
his eyes had a glassy look under the inflamed lids.

“ Citoyens” he began, in a weak, breathless voice
that yet had a strangely penetrating quality, “we
cannot suspect the Revolutionary Tribunal without
at the same time suspecting the Convention and the
Committee of Public Safety from which it derives
its powers. The citoyen Beauvisage has alarmed us,
showing us the President Montane tampering with
the course of justice in favour of a culprit. Why did
he not add, to relieve our fears, that on the denun-
ciation of the Public Prosecutor, Montane has been
dismissed his office and thrown into prison? • . .
Is it impossible to watch over the public safety with-
out casting suspicion on all and sundry? Is there
no talent, no virtue left in the Convention? Robes-
pierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, are not these honest
men? It is a notable thing that the most violent
language is held by individuals who have never been
known to fight for the Republic. They could speak
no otherwise if they wish to render her hateful.
Citoyens , less talk, say I, and more work! It is with
shot and shell and not with shouting that France will
be saved. One-half the cellars of the Section have

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103

not been dug up. Not a few citizens still hold con-
siderable quantities of bronze. We would remind the
rich that patriotic gifts are for them the most potent
guarantees. I recommend to your generosity the
wives and daughters of our soldiers who are cover-
ing themselves with glory on the frontiers and on
the Loire. One of these, the hussar Pommier (Augus-
tin), formerly a cellarman’s lad in the Rue de Jeru-
salem, on the ioth of last month, before Conde,
when watering the troop horses, was set upon by six
Austrian cavalrymen; he killed two of them and
brought in the others prisoners. I ask the Section
to declare that Pommier (Augustin) has done his
duty.”

This speech was applauded and the Sectionaries
dispersed with cries of “Vive la Republique!”

Left alone in the nave with Trubert, Gamelin
pressed the latter’s hand.

“Thank you. How are you?”

“I? Oh! Very well, very well!” replied Trubert,
coughing and spitting blood into his handkerchief.
“The Republic has many enemies without and within,
and our own Section counts a not inconsiderable
number of them. It is not with loud talk but with
iron and laws that empires are founded . . . good
night, Gamelin; I have letters to write.”

And he disappeared, his handkerchief pressed to
his lips, into the old-time sacristy.

The widow Gamelin, her cockade now and hence-
forth fastened more carefully in her hood, had from
one day to the next assumed a fine, consequential
air, a Republican haughtiness and the dignified car-
riage suitable to the mother of a juror of the State.

The veneration for the law in which she had been

104 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

brought up, the admiration with which the magis-
trate’s gown and cassock had from a child inspired
her, the holy terror she had always experienced at
sight of those to whom God had delegated on earth
His divine right of life and death, these feelings
made her regard as an august and worshipful and
holy being the son whom till yesterday she had
thought of as little more than a child. To her simple
mind the conviction of the continuity of justice
through all the changes of the Revolution was as
strong as was that of the legislators of the Conven-
tion regarding the continuity of the State under
varying systems of government, and the Revolu-
tionary Tribunal appeared to her every whit as
majestic as any of the time-honoured jurisdictions
she had been taught to revere.

The citoyen Brotteaux showed the young magis-
trate an interest mingled with surprise and a re-
luctant deference. His views were the same as the
widow Gamelin’s as to the continuity of justice
under successive governments; but, in flat contra-
diction to that good lady’s attitude, his scorn for
the Revolutionary Tribunals was on a par with his
contempt for the courts of the ancien regime. Not
daring to express his opinions openly and unable to
make up his mind to say nothing, he indulged in a
string of paradoxes which Gamelin understood just
well enough to suspect the anti-patriotism that
underlay them.

“The august tribunal whereon you are soon to
take your seat,” he told him on one occasion, “was
instituted by the French Senate for the security of
the Republic; and it was for certain a magnanimous
thought on the part of our legislators to set up a
court to try our enemies. I appreciate its generos-

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105

ity, but I doubt its wisdom. It would have shown
greater astuteness, it seems to me, if they had struck
down in the dark the more irreconcilable of their
adversaries and won over the rest by gifts and
promises. A tribunal strikes slowly and effects more
harm than it inspires fear; its first duty is to make
an example. The mischief yours does is to unite
together all whom it terrifies and make out of a
mass of contradictory interests and passions a great
party capable of common and effective action.
You sow fear broadcast, and it is terror more than
courage that produces heroes; I pray, citoyen, you
may not one day see prodigies of terror arrayed
against you ! ”

The engraver Desmahis, in love that week with
a light o’ love of the Palais-Egalite named Flora, a
brown-locked giantess, had nevertheless found five
minutes to congratulate his comrade and tell him
that such an appointment was a great compliment
to the fine arts.

Elodie herself, though without knowing it she
detested everything revolutionary and who dreaded
official functions as the most dangerous of rivals,
the most likely to estrange her lover’s affections,
the tender Elodie was impressed by the glamour
attaching to a magistrate called upon to pronounce
judgment in matters of life and death. Besides
which, Evariste’s promotion as a juryman was fol-
lowed by other fortunate results that filled her lov-
ing heart with satisfaction; the citoyen Jean Blaise
made a point of calling at the studio in the Place
de Thionville and embraced the young juror affec-
tionately in a burst of manly sympathy.

Like all the anti-revolutionaries, he had a great
respect for the authorities established by the Re-

106 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

public, and ever since he had been denounced for
fraud in connection with his supplies for the army,
the Revolutionary Tribunal had inspired him with
a wholesome dread. He felt himself to be a person
too much in the public eye and mixed up in too
many transactions to enjoy perfect security; so
the citoyen Gamelin struck him as a friend worth
cultivating. When all was said, one was a good
citizen and on the side of justice.

He gave the painter magistrate his hand, declar-
ing himself his true friend and a true patriot, a well-
wisher of the arts and of liberty. Gamelin forgot his
injuries and pressed the hand so generously offered.

“Citoyen Evariste Gamelin,” said Jean Blaise,
“I appeal to you as a friend and as a man of talent.
I am going to take you to-morrow for two days*
jaunt in the country; you can do some drawing and
we can enjoy a talk.”

Several times every year the print-dealer was in
the habit of making a two or three days' expedition
of this sort in the company of artists who made
drawings, according to his suggestions, of land-
scapes and ruins. He was quick to see what would
please the public and these little journeys always
resulted in some picturesque bits which were then
finished at home and cleverly engraved; prints in
red or colours were struck off from these, and brought
in a good profit to the citoyen Blaise. From the
same sketches he had over-doors and panels exe-
cuted, which sold as well or better than the decora-
tive works of Hubert Robert.

On this occasion he had invited the citoyen Gamelin
to accompany him to sketch buildings after nature,
so much had the juror's office increased the painter's
importance in his eyes. Two other artists were of

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 107

the party, the engraver Desmahis, who drew well,
and an almost unknown man, Philippe Dubois, an
excellent designer in the style of Robert. Accord-
ing to custom, the citoyenne Elodie with her friend
the citoyenne Hasard accompanied the artists. Jean
Blaise, an adept at combining pleasure with profit,
had also extended an invitation to the citoyenne
Thevenin, an actress at the Vaudeville, who was
reputed to be on the best of terms with him.

X

N Saturday at seven in the morning
the citoyen Blaise, in a black cocked-
hat, scarlet waistcoat, doe-skin
breeches, and boots with yellow tops,
rapped with the handle of his riding-
whip at the studio door. The citoy-
enne Gamelin was in the room in
polite conversation with the citoyen Brotteaux, while
Evariste stood before a bit of looking-glass knotting
his high white cravat.

“A pleasant journey, Monsieur Blaise!” the
citoyenne greeted him. “But, as you are going to
paint landscapes, why don’t you take Monsieur
Brotteaux, who is a painter? ”

“Well, well,” said Jean Blaise, “will you come
with us, citoyen Brotteaux?”

On being assured he would not be intruding,
Brotteaux, a man of a sociable temper and fond of
all amusements, accepted the invitation.

The citoyenne Elodie had climbed the four storeys
to embrace the widow Gamelin, whom she called
her good mother. She was in white from head to
foot, and smelt of lavender.

An old two-horsed travelling berline stood waiting
in the Place, with the hood down. Rose Thevenin
occupied the back seat with Julienne Hasard.
Elodie made the actress sit on the right, took the left-
hand place herself and put the slim Julienne between

108

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109

the two of them. Brotteaux settled himself, back
to the horses, facing the citoyenne Thevenin; Philippe
Dubois, opposite the citoyenne Hasard; Evariste
opposite Elodie. As for Philippe Desmahis, he
planted his athletic figure on the box, on the coach-
man’s left, and proceeded to amaze that worthy
with a traveller’s tale about a country in America
where the trees bore chitterlings and saveloys by
way of fruit.

The citoyen Blaise, who was a capital rider, took
the road on horseback, going on in front to escape
the dust from the berline.

As the wheels rattled merrily over the suburban
roads the travellers began to forget their cares, and
at sight of the green fields and trees and sky, their
minds turned to gay and pleasant thoughts. Elodie
dreamed she was surely born to rear poultry with
Evariste, a country justice, to help her, in some
village on a river bank beside a wood. The road-
side elms whirled by as they sped along. Outside
the villages the peasants’ mastiffs dashed out to in-
tercept the carriage and barked at the horses, while
a fat spaniel, lying in the roadway, struggled re-
luctantly to its feet; the fowls scattered and fled;
the geese in a close-packed band waddled slowly
out of the way. The children, with their fresh
morning faces, watched the company go by. It was
a hot day and a cloudless sky. The parched earth
was thirsting for rain. They alighted just outside
Villejuif. On their way through the little town,
Desmahis went into a fruiterer’s to buy cherries for
the overheated citoyennes. The shop-keeper was a
pretty woman, and Desmahis showed no signs of
reappearing. Philippe Dubois shouted to him, using
the nickname his friends constantly gave him:

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

"Ho there! Barbaroux! . . . Barbaroux!”

At this hated name the passers-by pricked up
their ears and faces appeared at every window.
Then, when they saw a young and handsome man
emerge from the shop, his jacket thrown open, his
neckerchief flying loose over a muscular chest, and
carrying over his shoulder a basket of cherries and
his coat at the end of a stick, taking him for the
proscribed girondist, a posse of sansculottes laid vio-
lent hands on him. Regardless of his indignant
protests, they would have haled him to the town-
hall, had not old Brotteaux, Gamelin, and the three
young women borne testimony that the citoyen
was named Philippe Desmahis, a copper-plate
engraver and a good Jacobin. Even then the sus-
pect had to show his carte de civisme, which he had
in his pocket by great good luck, for he was very
heedless in such matters. At this price he escaped
from the hands of these patriotic villagers without
worse loss than one of his lace ruffles, which had
been torn off; but this was a trifle after all. He
even received the apologies of the National Guards
who had hustled him the most savagely and who
now spoke of carrying him in triumph to the Hotel
de Ville.

A free man again and with the citoyennes Elodie,
Rose, and Julienne crowding round him, Desmahis
looked at Philippe Dubois — he did not like the man
and suspected him of having played him a prac-
tical joke — with a wry smile, and towering above
him by a whole head:

"Dubois,” he told him, "if you call me Barba-
roux again, I shall call you Brissot; he is a little fat
man with a silly face, greasy hair, an oily skin and
damp hands. They’ll be perfectly sure you are the

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111

infamous Brissot, the people’s enemy; and the good
Republicans, filled with horror and loathing at sight
of you, will hang you from the nearest lamp-post.
You hear me?”

The citoyen Blaise, who had been watering his
horse, announced that he had arranged the affair,
though it was quite plain to everybody that it had
been arranged without him.

The company got in again, and as they drove on,
Desmahis informed the coachman that in this same
plain of Longjumeau several inhabitants of the
Moon had once come down, in shape and colour
much like frogs, only very much bigger. Philippe
Dubois and Gamelin talked about their art. Dubois,
a pupil of Regnault, had been to Rome, where he
had seen Raphael’s tapestries, which he set above
all the masterpieces of the world. He admired Cor-
reggio’s colouring, Annibale Caracci’s invention,
Domenichino’s drawing, but thought nothing com-
parable in point of style with the pictures of Pom-
peio Battoni. He had been in touch at Rome with
Monsieur Menageot and Madame Lebrun, who had
both pronounced against the Revolution; so the
less said of them the better. But he spoke highly of
Angelica Kauffmann, who had a pure taste and a
fine knowledge of the Antique.

Gamelin deplored that the apogee of French paint-
ing, belated as it was, for it only dated from Lesueur,
Claude 4 and Poussin and corresponded with the
decadence of the Italian and Flemish schools, had
been succeeded by so rapid and profound a decline.
This he attributed to the degraded state of manners
and to the Academy, which was the expression of
that state. But the Academy had been happily
abolished, and under the influence of new canons,

112 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

David and his school were creating an art worthy of
a free people. Among the young painters, Gamelin,
without a trace of envy, gave the first place to
Hennequin and Topino-Lebrun. Philippe Dubois
preferred his own master Regnault to David, and
founded his hopes for the future of painting on that
rising artist Gerard.

Meantime Elodie complimented the citoyenne
Thevenin on her red velvet toque and white gown.
The actress repaid the compliment by congratulating
her two companions on their toilets and advising
them how to do better still; the thing, she said, was
to be more sparing in ornaments and trimmings.

“A woman can never be dressed too simply,”
was her dictum. “We see this on the stage, where
the costume should allow every pose to be appre-
ciated. That is its true beauty and it needs no
other.”

“You are right, my dear,” replied Elodie. “Only
there is nothing more expensive in dress than sim-
plicity. It is not always out of bad taste we add
frills and furbelows; sometimes it is to save our
pockets.”

They discussed eagerly the autumn fashions, —
frocks entirely plain and short-waisted.

“So many women disfigure themselves through
following the fashion!” declared Rose Thevenin.
“In dressing every woman should study her own
figure.”

“There is nothing beautiful save draperies that
follow the lines of the figure and fall in folds,” put
in Gamelin. “Everything that is cut out and sewn
is hideous.”

These sentiments, more appropriate in a treatise
of Winckelmann’s than in the mouth of a man talk-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 113

ing to Parisiennes, met with the scorn they deserved,
being entirely disregarded.

“For the winter,” observed Elodie, “they are
making quilted gowns in Lapland style of taffeta
and muslin, and coats a la Zulime , round-waisted
and opening over a stomacher a la Turque.”

“Nasty cheap things,” declared the actress, “you
can buy them ready made. Now I have a little
seamstress who works like an angel and is not dear;
I’ll send her to see you, my dear.”

So they prattled on trippingly, eagerly discussing
and appraising different fine fabrics — striped taffeta,
self-coloured china silk, muslin, gauze, nankeen.

And old Brotteaux, as he listened to them, thought
with a pensive pleasure of these veils that hide
women’s charms and change incessantly, — how they
last for a few years to be renewed eternally like the
flowers of the field. And his eyes, as they wandered
from the three pretty women to the cornflowers and
the poppies in the wheat, were wet with smiling
tears.

They reached Orangis about nine o’clock and
stopped before the inn, the Auberge de la Cloche ,
where the Poitrines, husband and wife, offered ac-
commodation for man and beast. The citoyen Blaise,
who had repaired any disorder in his dress, helped
the citoyennes to alight. After ordering dinner for
midday, they all set off, preceded by their paint-
boxes, drawing-boards, easels, and parasols, which
were carried by a village lad, for the meadows near
the confluence of the Orge and the Yvette, a charm-
ing bit of country giving a view over the verdant
plain of Longjumeau and bounded by the Seine
and the woods of Sainte-Genevieve.

Jean Blaise, the leader of the troop of artists, was

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

bandying funny stories with the ci-devant financier,
tales that brought in without rhyme or reason Ver-
boquet the Open-handed, Catherine Cuissot the
pedlar, the demoiselles Chaudron, the fortune-teller
Galichet, as well as characters of a later time like
Cadet-Rouselle and Madame Angot.

Evariste, inspired with a sudden love of nature,
as he saw a troop of harvesters binding their sheaves,
felt the tears rise to his eyes, while visions of con-
cord and affection filled his heart. For his part,
Desmahis was blowing the light down of the seed-
ing dandelions into the citoyennes ’ hair. All three
loved posies, as town-bred girls always do, and were
busy in the meadows plucking the mullein, whose
blossoms grow in spikes close round the stem, the
campanula, with its little blue-bells hanging in rows
one above another, the slender twigs of the scented
vervain, wallwort, mint, dyer’s weed, milfoil — all the
wild flowers of late summer. Jean-Jacques had
made botany the fashion among townswomen, so
all three knew the name and symbolism of every
flower. As the delicate petals, drooping for want of
moisture, wilted in her hands and fell in a shower
about her feet, the citoyenne Elodie sighed:

“They are dying already, the poor flowers!”

All set to work and strove to express nature as
they saw her; but each saw her through the eyes
of a master. In a short time Philippe Dubois had
knocked off in the style of Hubert Robert a deserted
farm, a clump of storm-riven trees, a dried-up tor-
rent. Evariste Gamelin found a landscape by Pous-
sin ready made on the banks of the Yvette. Philippe
Desmahis was at work before a pigeon-cote in the
picaresque manner of Callot and Duplessis. Old
Brotteaux who piqusd himself on imitating the

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115

Flemings, was drawing a cow with infinite care.
Elodie was sketching a peasant’s hut, while her
friend Julienne, who was a colourman’s daughter,
set her palette. A swarm of children pressed about
her, watching her paint, whom she would scold out
of her light at intervals, calling them pestering gnats
and giving them lollipops. The citoyenne Thevenin,
picking out the pretty ones, would wash their faces,
kiss them and put flowers in their hair. She fondled
them with a gentle air of melancholy, because she
had missed the joy of motherhood, — as well as to
heighten her fascinations by a show of tender senti-
ment and to practise herself in the art of pose and
grouping.

She was the only member of the party neither
drawing nor painting. She devoted her attention to
learning a part and still more to charming her com-
panions, flitting from one to another, book in hand,
a bright, entrancing creature.

“No complexion, no figure, no voice, no nothing,”
declared the women, — and she filled the earth with
movement, colour and harmony. Faded, pretty,
tired, indefatigable, she was the joy of the expedi-
tion. A woman of ever-varying moods, but always
gay, sensitive, quick-tempered and yet easy-going
and accommodating, a sharp tongue with the most
polished utterance, vain, modest, true, false, de-
lightful; if Rose Thevenin enjoyed no triumphant
success, if she was not worshipped as a goddess, it
was because the times were out of joint and Paris
had no more incense, no more altars for the Graces.
The citoyenne Blaise herself, who made a face when
she spoke of her and used to call her “my step-
mother,” could not see her and not be subjugated
by such an array of charms.

110 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

They were rehearsing Les Visitandines at the
Theatre Feydeau, and Rose was full of self-congrat-
ulation at having a part full of “naturalness.” It
was this quality she strove after, this she sought
and this she found.

“Then we shall not see * Pamela’ ?’* asked
Desmahis.

The Theatre de la Nation was closed and the
actors packed off to the Madelonnettes and to
Pelagie.

“Do you call that liberty?” cried Rose Thevenin,
raising her beautiful eyes to heaven in indignant
protest.

“The players of the Theatre de la Nation are
aristocrats, and the citoyen Francois’ piece tends to
make men regret the privileges of the noblesse.”

“Gentlemen,” said Rose Thevenin, “have you
patience to listen only to those who flatter you?”

As midday approached everybody began to feel
pangs of hunger and the little band marched back
to the inn.

Evariste walked beside Elodie, smilingly recalling
memories of their first meetings :

“Two young birds had fallen out of their nests
on the roof on to the sill of your window. You
brought the little creatures up by hand; one of them
lived and in due time flew away. The other died in
the nest of cotton-wool you had made him. ‘It was
the one I loved best,’ I remember you said. That day,
Elodie, you were wearing a red bow in your hair.”

Philippe Dubois and Brotteaux, a little behind
the rest, were talking of Rome, where they had
both been, the latter in ’72, the other towards the
last days of the Academy. Brotteaux indeed had
never forgotten the Princess Mondragone, to whom

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 117

he would most certainly have poured out his plaints
but for the Count Altieri, who always followed her
like her shadow. Nor did Philippe Dubois fail to
mention that he had been invited to dine with Car-
dinal de Bernis and that he was the most obliging
host in the world.

“I knew him,” said Brotteaux, “and I may add
without boasting that I was for some while one of
his most intimate friends; he had a taste for low
society. He was an amiable man, and for all his
affectation of telling fairy tales, there was more
sound philosophy in his little finger than in the'
heads of all you Jacobins, who are for making us
virtuous and God-fearing by Act of Parliament.
Upon my word I prefer our simple-minded theo-
phagists who know not what they say nor yet what
they do, to these mad law-menders, who make it
their business to guillotine us in order to render us
wise and virtuous and adorers of the Supreme Being
who has created them in His likeness. In former
days I used to have Mass said in the Chapel at Les
Ilettes by a poor devil of a Cure who used to say
in his cups: ‘Don’t let’s speak ill of sinners; we
live by ’em, we priests, unworthy as we are!’ You
must agree, sir, this prayer-monger held sound
maxims of government. We should adopt his prin-
ciples, and govern men as being what they are and
not what we should like them to be.”

Rose Thevenin had meantime drawn closer to
the old man. She knew he had lived on a grand
scale, and the thought of this gilded the ci-devant
financier’s present poverty, which she deemed less
humiliating as being due to general causes, the re-
sult of the public bankruptcy. She saw in him, with
curiosity not unmixed with respect, the survival of

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

one of those open-handed millionaires of whom her
elder comrades of the stage spoke with sighs of un-
feigned regret. Besides, the old fellow in his plum-
coloured coat, so threadbare and so well brushed,
pleased her by his agreeable address.

“Monsieur Brotteaux,” she said to him, “we
know how once upon a time, in a noble park, on
moonlight nights, you would slip into the shade of
myrtle groves with actresses and dancing-girls to
the far-off" shrilling of flutes and fiddles. . . . Alasl
they were more lovely, were they not, your goddesses
of the Opera and the Comedie-Fran^aise, than we
of to-day, we poor little National actresses?”

“Never think it. Mademoiselle,” returned Brot-
teaux, “but believe me, if one like you had been
known in those days, she would have moved alone,
as sovereign queen without a rival (little as she
would have desired such solitude), in the park you
are obliging enough to form so flattering a picture
of. ...”

It was quite a rustic inn, this Hotel de la Cloche.
A branch of holly hung over the great waggon doors
that opened on a courtyard where fowls were always
pecking about in the damp soil. On the far side
of this stood the house itself, consisting of a ground
floor and one storey above, crowned by a high-
pitched tiled roof and with walls almost hidden under
old climbing rose-trees covered with blossom. To
the right, trimmed fruit-trees showed their tops
above the low garden wall. To the left was the
stable, with an outside manger and a barn sup-
ported by wooden pillars. A ladder leant against
the wall. Here again, under a shed crowded with
agricultural implements and stumps of trees, a
white cock was keeping an eye on his hens from the

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

119

top of a broken-down cabriolet. The courtyard was
enclosed on this side by cow-sheds, in front of which
rose in mountainous grandeur a dunghill which at
this moment a girl as broad as she was long, with
straw-coloured hair, was turning over with a pitch-
fork. The liquid manure filled her sabots and bathed
her bare feet, and you could see the heels rise out
of her shoes every now and then as yellow as saffron.
Her petticoats were kilted and revealed the filth on
her enormous calves and thick ankles. While
Philippe Desmahis was staring at her, surprised and
tickled by the whimsicalities of nature in framing
this odd example of breadth without length, the
landlord shouted:

'‘'Ho, there! Tronche, my girl! go fetch some
water!”

She turned her head, showing a scarlet face and
a vast mouth in which one huge front tooth was
missing. It had needed nothing less than a bull’s
horn to effect a breach in that powerful jaw. She
stood there grinning, pitchfork on shoulder. Her
sleeves were rolled up and her arms, as thick as an-
other woman’s thighs, gleamed in the sun.

The table was laid in the farm kitchen, where a
brace of fowls was roasting, — they were almost
done to a turn, — under the hood of the open fire-
place, above which hung two or three old fowling-
pieces by way of ornament. The bare white-washed
room, twenty feet long, was lighted only through
the panes of greenish glass let into the door and by
a single window, framed in roses, near which the
grandmother sat turning her spinning-wheel. She
wore a coif and a lace frilling in the fashion of the
Regency. Her gnarled, earth-stained fingers held
the distaff. Flies clustered about her lids without

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

her trying to drive them away. As a child in her
mother’s arms, she had seen Louis XIV go by in
his coach.

Sixty years ago she had made the journey to
Paris. In a weak sing-song voice she told the tale
to the three young women, standing in front of her,
how she had seen the Hotel de Ville, the Tuileries
and the Samaritaine, and how, when she was cross-
ing the Pont-Royal, a barge loaded with apples for
the Marche du Mail had broken up, the apples had
floated down the current and the river was all red
with the rosy-cheeked fruit.

She had been told of the changes that had occurred
of late in the kingdom, and in particular of the coil
there was betwixt the cures who had taken the oath
and the nonjuring cures. She knew likewise there
had been wars and famines and portents in the sky.
She did not believe the King was dead. They had
contrived his escape, she would have it, by a sub-
terranean passage, and had handed over to the
headsman in his stead a man of the common people.

At the old woman’s feet, in his wicker cradle,
Jeannot, the last born of the Poitrines, was cutting
his teeth. The citoyenne Thevenin lifted the cradle
and smiled at the child, which moaned feebly, worn
out with feverishness and convulsions. It must
have been very ill, for they had sent for the doctor,
the citoyen Pelleport, who, it is true, being a deputy-
substitute to the Convention, asked no payment
for his visits.

The citoyenne Thevenin, an innkeeper’s daughtei
herself, was in her element; not satisfied with the
way the farm-girl had washed the plates and dishes,
she gave an extra wipe to the crockery and glass, an
extra polish to the knives and forks. While the

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

121

citoyenne Poitrine was attending to the soup, which
she tasted from time to time as a good cook should,
Elodie was cutting up into slices a four-pound loaf
hot from the oven. Gamelin, when he saw what she
was doing, addressed her:

“A few days ago I read a book written by a young
German whose name I have forgotten, and which
has been very well translated into French. In it
you have a beautiful young girl named Charlotte,
who, like you, Elodie, was cutting bread and butter,
and like you, cutting it gracefully, and so prettily that
at the sight the young Werther fell in love with her.”

“And it ended in their marrying?” asked Elodie.

“No,” replied Evariste; “it ended in Werther’s
death by violence.”

They dined well, they were all very hungry; but
the fare was indifferent. Jean Blaise complained
bitterly; he was a great trencherman and made it a
rule of conduct to feed well; and no doubt what
urged him to elaborate his gluttony into a system
was the general scarcity. In every household the
Revolution had overturned the cooking pot. The
common run of citizens had nothing to chew upon.
Clever folks like Jean Blaise, who made big profits
amid the general wretchedness, went to the cook-
shop where they showed their astuteness by stuff-
ing themselves to repletion. As for Brotteaux who,
in this year II of liberty, was living on chestnuts
and bread-crusts, he could remember having supped
at Grimod de la Reyniere’s at the near end of the
Champs Elysees. Eager to win the repute of an
accomplished gourmand he reeled off, sitting there
before Dame Poitrine’s bacon and cabbages, a string
of artful kitchen recipes and wise gastronomic max-
ims. Presently, when Gamelin protested that a Re-

122 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

publican scorns the pleasures of the table, the old
financier, always a lover of antiquity, gave the young
Spartan the true recipe for the famous black broth.

After dinner, Jean Blaise, who never forgot busi-
ness, set his itinerant academy to make studies and
sketches of the inn, which struck him as quite ro-
mantic in its dilapidation. While Philippe Desmahis
and Philippe Dubois were drawing the cow-houses
the girl Tronche came out to feed the pigs. The
citoyen Pelleport, officer of health, who at the same
moment appeared at the door of the farm kitchen
where he had been bestowing his professional services
on the Poitrine baby, stepped up to the artists and
after complimenting them on their talents, which
were an honour to the whole nation, pointed to the
Tronche girl in the middle of her porkers:

“You see that creature,” he said, “it is not one
girl, it is two girls. I speak by the letter, under-
stand that. I was amazed at the extraordinary
massiveness of her bony framework and I examined
her, to discover she had most of the bones in du-
plicate — in each thigh two femurs welded together,
in each shoulder a double humerus. Some of her
muscles are likewise in duplicate. It is a case, in
my view, of a pair of twins associated or rather con-
founded together. It is an interesting phenomenon.
I notified Monsieur Saint-Hilaire of the facts, and
he thanked me. It is a monster you see before
you, citoyens. The people here call her ‘the girl
Tronche’; they should say ‘the girls Tronches,’
for there are two of them. Nature has these freaks.
. . . Good evening, citoyens; we shall have a storm
to-night. . . .”

After supper by candle-light, the Academy Blaise
adjourned to the courtyard where they were joined

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 123

by a son and daughter of the house in a game of
blindman’s-buff, in which the young folks, both men
and women, displayed a feverish energy sufficiently
accounted for by the high spirits proper to their age
without seeking an explanation in the wild and pre-
carious times in which they lived. When it was
quite dark, Jean Blaise proposed children’s games
in the farm kitchen. Elodie suggested the game of
“hunt my heart,” and this was agreed to unani-
mously. Under the girl’s direction Philippe Desmahis
traced in chalk, on different pieces of furniture, on
doors and walls, seven hearts, that is to say one less
than there were players, for old Brotteaux had
obligingly joined the rest. They danced round in a
ring singing “La Tour, prends garde!” and at a sig-
nal from Elodie, each ran to put a hand on a heart.
Gamelin in his absent-minded clumsiness was too
late to find one vacant, and had to pay a forfeit, the
little knife he had bought for six sous at the fair of
Saint-Germain and with which he had cut the loaf
for his mother in her poverty. The game went on,
and one after the other Blaise, Elodie, Brotteaux
and Rose Thevenin failed to touch a heart; each
paid a forfeit in turn — a ring, a reticule, a little
morocco-bound book, a bracelet. Then the forfeits
were raffled on Elodie’s lap, and each player had to
redeem his property by showing his society accom-
plishments — singing a song or reciting a poem.
Brotteaux chose the speech of the patron saint of
France in the first canto of the Pucelle:

“Je suis Denis et saint de mon m6tier,

J’aime la Gaule, . . *

* “ I am Denis, and sainthood is my trade,
I love the land of Gaul, . . . etc.*’

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

The citoyen Blaise, though a far less well-read man,
replied without hesitation with Richemond’s ripost:

“ Monsieur le Saint, ce n’6tait pas la peine
D’abandonner le celeste domaine ...” *

At that time everybody was reading and re-read-
ing with delight the masterpiece of the French
Ariosto; the most serious of men smiled over the
loves of Jeanne and Dunois, the adventures of Agnes
and Monrose and the exploits of the winged ass.
Every man of cultivation knew by heart the choice
passages of this diverting and philosophical poem.
Evariste Gamelin himself, stern-tempered as he
was, when he recovered his twopenny knife from
Elodie’s lap, recited the going down of Grisbourdon
into hell, with a good deal of spirit. The citoyenne
Thevenin sang without accompaniment Nina’s
ballad:

“Quand le bien-aime reviendra.”

Desmahis sang to the tune of La Faridondaine:

“Quelqucs-uns prirent le cochon
De ce bon saint Antoine,

Et lui mettant un capuchon,

Ils en firent un moine.

II n’en coiltait que la fagon . . f

All the same Desmahis was in a pensive mood.

* “Well, well, sir Saint, ’twas hardly worth your pains
Thus to forsake the heavenly domains. . .

“Some ribalds took the pig,

Of the good St. Anthony,

And clapping a cowl on’s head,

They made the brute a monk.

*Twas all a matter of dress. . .

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125

For the moment he was ardently in love with all
the three women with whom he was playing for-
feits, and was casting burning looks of soft appeal
at each in turn. He loved Rose Thevenin for her
grace, her supple figure, her clever acting, her roving
glances, and her voice that went straight to a man's
heart; he loved Elodie, because he recognized in-
stinctively her rich endowment of temperament and
her kind, complaisant humour; he loved Julienne
Hasard, despite her colourless hair, her pale eye-
lashes, her freckles and her thin bust, because, like
Dunois in Voltaire’s Pucelle , he was always ready,
in his generosity, to give the least engaging a token
of love — and the more so in this instance because
she appeared to be for the moment the most neg-
lected, and therefore the most amenable to his at-
tentions. Without a trace of vanity, he was never
sure of these being agreeable; nor yet was he ever
sure of their not being. So he never omitted to offer
them on the chance. Taking advantage of the op-
portunities offered by the game of forfeits, he made
some tender speeches to Rose Thevenin, who showed
no displeasure, but could hardly say much in return
under the jealous eyes of the citoyen Jean Blaise.
He spoke more warmly still to the citoyenne Elodie,
whom he knew to be pledged to Gamelin, but he
was not so exacting as to want a heart all to him-
self. Elodie could never care for him; but she
thought him a handsome fellow and did not alto-
gether succeed in hiding the fact from him. Finally,
he whispered his most ardent vows in the ear of the
citoyenne Hasard, which she received with an air of
bewildered stupefaction that might equally express
abject submission or chill indifference. And Des-
mahis did not believe she was indifferent to him.

126 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

The inn contained only two bedrooms, both on
the first floor and opening on the same landing.
That to the left, the better of the two, boasted a
flowered paper and a looking-glass the size of a man’s
hand, the gilt frame of which had been blackened
by generations of flies since the days when Louis
XIV was a child. In it, under sprigged muslin cur-
tains, stood two beds with down pillows, coverlets
and counterpanes. This room was reserved for the
three citoyennes.

When the time came to retire, Desmahis and the
citoyenne Hasard, each holding a bedroom candle-
stick, wished each other good-night on the landing.
The amorous engraver quickly passed a note to the
colourman’s daughter, beseeching her to come to
him, when everybody was asleep, in the garret, which
was over the citoyennes ’ chamber.

With judicious foresight, he had taken care in the
course of the day to study the lie of the land and ex-
plore the garret in question, which was full of strings
of onions, apples and pears left there to ripen with
a swarm of wasps crawling over them, chests and
old trunks. He had even noticed an old bed of
sacking, decrepit and now disused, as far as he could
see, and a palliasse, all ripped up and jumping with
fleas.

Facing the citoyennes’ room was another of very
modest dimensions containing three beds, where
the men of the party were to sleep, in such comfort
as they might. But Brotteaux, who was a Sybarite,
betook himself to the barn to sleep among the hay.
As for Jean Blaise, he had disappeared. Dubois and
Gamelin were soon asleep. Desmahis went to bed;
but no sooner had the silence of night, like a stag-
nant pool, enveloped the house, than the engraver

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

127

got up and climbed the wooden staircase, which
creaked under his bare feet. The door of the garret
stood ajar. From within came a breath of stifling
hot air, mingled with the acrid smell of rotting fruit.
On the broken-down bed of sacking lay the girl
Tronche, fast asleep with her mouth open.

Desmahis returned to his room, where he slept
soundly and peacefully till daybreak.

On the morrow, after a last day’s work, the itin-
erant Academy took the road back to Paris. When
Jean Blaise paid mine host in assignats, the citoyen
Poitrine complained bitterly that he never saw what
he called “ square money ” nowadays, and promised
a fine candle to the beggar who’d bring back the
“ yellow boys” again.

He offered the citoyennes their pick of flowers.
At his orders, the girl Tronche mounted on a ladder
in her sabots and kilted skirts, giving a full view of
her noble, much-bespattered calves, and was indefati-
gable in cutting blossoms from the climbing roses
that covered the wall. From her huge hands the
flowers fell in showers, in torrents, in avalanches,
into the laps of Elodie, J ulienne, and Rose Thevenin,
who held out their skirts to catch them. The car-
riage was full of them. The whole party, when they

128 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

got back at nightfall, carried armfuls home, and
their sleeping and waking were perfumed with their
fragrance.

VT

130

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

wretched place ; after a brief glance at the bro-
ken tiling, she asked in a tone of surprise and
sorrow :

“ Is this where you live, Maurice ? You need have
little fear of intruders. One must be an imp or a
cat to find you here."

“ I am cramped for space,” returned the ci-devant
millionaire ; “and I do not deny the fact that some-
times it rains on my pallet. It is a trifling incon-
venience. And on fine nights I can see the moon,
symbol and confidant of men’s loves. For the moon,
Madame, since the world began, has been apostro-
phized by lovers, and at her full, with her pale round
face, she recalls to the fond swain’s mind the object
of his desires.”

“ 1 know,” sighed the citoyenne.

“ When their time comes the cats make a fine pan-
demonium in the rain gutter yonder. But we must
forgive love if it makes them caterwaul and swear
on the tiles, seeing how it fills the lives of men with
torments and villanies.”

Both had had the tact to greet each other as
friends who had parted the night before to take their
night’s rest, and though grown strangers to each
other, they conversed with a good grace and on a
footing of friendliness.

At the same time Madame de Rochemaure seemed
pensive. The Revolution, which had for a long
while been pleasant and profitable to her, was now
a source of anxiety and disquietude ; her suppers
were growing less brilliant and less merry. The
notes of her harp no longer charmed the cloud from
sombre faces. Her play-tables were forsaken by the
most lavish punters. Many of her cronies, now
numbered among the suspects, were in hiding ; her

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

131

lover, Morhardt the financier, was under arrest, and
it was on his behalf she had come to sound the juror
Gamelin. She was suspect herself. A posse of Na-
tional Guards had made a search at her house, had
turned out the drawers of her cabinets, prised up
boards in her floor, thrust their bayonets into her
mattresses. They had found nothing, had made
their apologies and drunk her wine. But they had
come very near lighting on her correspondence with
an emigre , Monsieur d’Expilly. Certain friends he
had among the Jacobins had warned her that Henry,
her handsome favourite, was beginning to com*
promise his party by his violent language, which
was too extravagant to be sincere.

Elbows on knees and head on fist, she sat buried
in thought; then turning to her old lover sitting on
the palliasse, she asked:

“What do you think of it all, Maurice ?”

“I think these good gentry give a philosopher and
an amateur of the shows of life abundant matter
for reflection and amusement; but that it would be
better for you, my dear, if you were out of France.”

“Maurice, where will it land us?”

“That is what you asked me, Louise, one day we
were driving on the banks of the Cher, on the road
to Les Ilettes; the horse, you remember, had taken
the bit in his teeth and was galloping off with us at
a frantic pace. How inquisitive women are! to-day,
for the second time, you want to know where we are
going to. Ask the fortune-tellers. I am not a
wizard, sweetheart. And philosophy, even the
soundest, is of small help for revealing the future.
These things will have an end; everything has.
One may foresee divers issues. The triumph of the
Coalition and the entry of the allies into Paris.

132

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

They are not far off; yet I doubt if they will get
there. These soldiers of the Republic take their
beatings with a zest nothing can extinguish. It
may be Robespierre will marry Madame Royale and
have himself proclaimed Protector of the Kingdom
during the minority of Louis XVII.”

“You think so!” exclaimed the citoyenne , agog
to have a hand in so promising an intrigue.

“Again it may be,” Brotteaux went on, “that La
Vendee will win the day and the rule of the priests
be set up again over heaps of ruins and piles of
corpses. You cannot conceive, dear heart, the em-
pire the clergy still wields over the masses of the
foolish, ... I beg pardon, I meant to say, — of ‘the
Faithful’; it was a slip of the tongue. The most
likely thing, in my poor opinion, is that the Revo-
lutionary Tribunal will bring about the destruction
of the regime it has established; it is a menace over
too many heads. Those it terrifies are without
number; they will unite together, and to destroy it
they will destroy the whole system of government.
I think you have got our young friend Gamelin
posted to this court. He is virtuous; he will be
implacable. The more I think of it, fair friend, the
more convinced I am that this Tribunal, set up to save
the Republic, will destroy it. The Convention has
resolved to have, like Royalty, its Grands Jours,* its
Chambre Ardente, and to provide for its security by
means of magistrates appointed by itself and by it
kept in subjection. But how inferior are the Con-
vention’s Grands Jours to those of the Monarchy,

* Grands Jours , — under the ancien regime, an extraordinary
assize held by judges specially appointed by the King and acting
in his name.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 133

and its Chambre Ardente to that of Louis XIV! The
Revolutionary Tribunal is dominated by a senti-
ment of mean-spirited justice and common equality
that will quickly make it odious and ridiculous and
will disgust everybody. Do you know, Louise, that
this tribunal, which is about to cite to its bar the
Queen of France and twenty-one legislators, yester-
day condemned a servant-girl convicted of crying:
‘Vive le Roi!’ with malicious intent and in the
hope of destroying the Republic? Our judges, with
their black hats and plumes, are working on the
model of that William Shakespeare, so dear to the
heart of Englishmen, who drags in coarse buffoon-
eries in the middle of his most tragic scenes.”

‘‘Ah, well! Maurice,” asked the citoyenne, “are
you still as fortunate as ever with women?”

“Alas!” replied Brotteaux, “the doves flock to
the bright new dovecote and light no more on the
ruined tower.”

“You have not changed. . . . Good-bye, dear
friend, — till we meet again.”

The same evening the dragoon Henry, paying a
visit uninvited at Madame de Rochemaure’s, found
her in the act of sealing a letter on which he read
the address of the citoyen Rauline at Vernon. The
letter, he knew, was for England. Rauline used to
receive Madame de Rochemaure’s communications
by a postilion of the posting-service and send them
on to Dieppe by the hands of a fishwife. The mas-
ter of a fishing-smack delivered them under cover
of night to a British ship cruising off the coast; an
emigre, Monsieur d’Expilly, received them in London
and passed them on, if he thought it advisable, to
the Cabinet of Saint James’s.

134 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

Henry was young and good looking; Achilles was
not such a paragon of grace and vigour when he
donned the armour Ulysses offered him. But the
citoyenne Rochemaure, once so enraptured by the
charms of the young hero of the Commune, now
looked askance at him; her mood had changed
since the day she was told how the young soldier
had been denounced at the Jacobins as one whose
zeal outran discretion and that he might compromise
and ruin her. Henry thought it might not break
his heart perhaps to leave off loving Madame de
Rochemaure; but he was piqued to have fallen in
her good graces. He counted on her to meet sundry
expenses in which the service of the Republic had
involved him. Last but not least, remembering to
what extremities women will proceed and how they
go in a flash from the most ardent tenderness to the
coldest indifference, and how easy they find it to
sacrifice what once they held dear and destroy what
once they adored, he began to suspect that some
day his fascinating mistress might have him thrown
into prison to get rid of him. Common prudence
urged him to regain his lost ascendancy and to this
end he had come armed with all his fascinations.
He came near, drew away, came near again, hovered
round her, ran from her, in the approved fashion of
seduction in the ballet. Then he threw himself in
an armchair and in his irresistible voice, his voice
that went straight to women’s hearts, he extolled
the charms of nature and solitude and with a
lovelorn sigh proposed an expedition to Ermenon-
ville.

Meanwhile she was striking chords on her harp
and looking about her with an expression of impa-
tience and boredom. Suddenly Henry got up with

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

135

a gesture of gloomy resolution and informed her that
he was starting for the army and in a few days
would be before Maubeuge.

Without a sign either of scepticism or surprise
she nodded her approval.

“You congratulate me on my decision?”

“I do indeed.”

She was expecting a new admirer who was in-
finitely to her taste and from whom she hoped to
reap great advantages, — a contrast in every way to
the old, a Mirabeau come to life again, a Danton
rehabilitated and turned army-contractor, a lion
who talked of pitching every patriot into the Seine.
She was on tenter-hooks, thinking to hear the bell
ring at any moment.

To hasten Henry’s departure, she fell silent,
yawned, fingered a score, and yawned again. See-
ing he made no move to go, she told him she had to
go out and withdrew into her dressing-room.

He called to her in a broken voice:

“Farewell, Louise! . . . Shall I ever see you
again?” — and his hands were busy fumbling in the
Open writing-desk.

When he reached the street, he opened the letter
addressed to the citoyen Rauline and read it with
absorbed attention. Indeed it drew a curious pic-
ture of the state of public feeling in France. It
spoke of the Queen, of the actress Rose Thevenin,
of the Revolutionary Tribunal and a host of con-
fidential remarks emanating from that worthy,
Brotteaux des Ilettes, were repeated in it.

Having read to the end and restored the missive
to his pocket, he stood hesitating a few moments;
then, like a man who has made up his mind and says
to himself “the sooner the better,” he turned his

136 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

steps to the Tuileries and found his way into
the antechamber of the Committee of General
Security.

The same day, at three o’clock of the afternoon,
Evariste Gamelin was seated on the jurors’ bench
along with fourteen colleagues, most of whom he
knew, simple-minded, honest, patriotic folks, savants,
artists or artisans, — a painter like himself, an artist
in black-and-white, both men of talent, a surgeon,
a cobbler, a ci-devant marquis, who had given high
proofs of patriotism, a printer, two or three small
tradesmen, a sample lot in a word of the inhabitants
of Paris. There they sat, in the workman’s blouse
or bourgeois coat, with their hair close-cropped a
la Titus or clubbed a la catogan; there were cocked-
hats tilted over the eyes, round hats clapped on the
back of the head, red caps of liberty smothering the
ears. Some were dressed in coat, flapped waistcoat
and breeches, as in olden days, others in the car-
magnole and striped trousers of the sansculottes.
Wearing top-boots or buckled shoes or sabots, they
offered in their persons every variety of masculine
attire prevalent at that date. Having all of them
occupied their places on several previous occasions,
they seemed very much at their ease, and Gamelin
envied them their unconcern. His own heart was
thumping, his ears roaring; a mist was before his
eyes and everything about him took on a livid
tinge.

When the usher announced the opening of the
sitting, three judges took their places on a raised
platform of no great size in front of a green table.
They wore hats cockaded and crowned with great
black plumes and the official cloak with a tricolour

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

137

riband from which a heavy silver medal was suspend-
ed on the breast. In front of them at the foot of the
dais, sat the deputy of the Public Prosecutor, simi-
larly attired. The clerk of the court had a seat be-
tween the judges’ bench and the prisoner’s chair, at
present unoccupied. To Gamelin’s eyes these men
wore a different aspect from that of every day; they
seemed nobler, graver, more alarming, albeit their
bearing was commonplace enough as they turned
over papers, beckoned to an usher or leant back to
listen to some communication from a juryman or
an officer of the court.

Above the judges’ heads hung the tables of the
Rights of Man; to their right and left, against the
old feudal walls, the busts of Le Peltier Saint-
Fargeau and Marat. Facing the jury bench, at the
lower end of the hall, rose the public gallery. The
first row of seats was filled by women, who all, fair,
brown and grey-haired alike, wore the high coif with
the pleated tucker shading their cheeks; the breast,
which invariably, as decreed by the fashion of the
day, showed the amplitude of the nursing mother’s
bosom, was covered with a crossed white kerchief
or the rounded bib of a blue apron. They sat with
folded arms resting on the rail of the tribune. Be-
hind them, scattered about the rising tiers, could be
seen a sprinkling of citizens dressed in the varied
garb which at that date gave every gathering so
striking and picturesque a character. On the right
hand, near the doors, behind a broad barrier, a space
was reserved where the public could stand. On this
occasion it was nearly empty. The business that
was to occupy the attention of this particular
section of the tribunal interested only a few
spectators, while doubtless the other sections sitting

136 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

steps to the Tuileries and found his way into
the antechamber of the Committee of General
Security.

The same day, at three o’clock of the afternoon,
Evariste Gamelin was seated on the jurors’ bench
along with fourteen colleagues, most of whom he
knew, simple-minded, honest, patriotic folks, savants,
artists or artisans, — a painter like himself, an artist
in black-and-white, both men of talent, a surgeon,
a cobbler, a ci-devant marquis, who had given high
proofs of patriotism, a printer, two or three small
tradesmen, a sample lot in a word of the inhabitants
of Paris. There they sat, in the workman’s blouse
or bourgeois coat, with their hair close-cropped a
la Titus or clubbed a la catogan; there were cocked-
hats tilted over the eyes, round hats clapped on the
back of the head, red caps of liberty smothering the
ears. Some were dressed in coat, flapped waistcoat
and breeches, as in olden days, others in the car-
magnole and striped trousers of the sansculottes.
Wearing top-boots or buckled shoes or sabots, they
offered in their persons every variety of masculine
attire prevalent at that date. Having all of them
occupied their places on several previous occasions,
they seemed very much at their ease, and Gamelin
envied them their unconcern. His own heart was
thumping, his ears roaring; a mist was before his
eyes and everything about him took on a livid
tinge.

When the usher announced the opening of the
sitting, three judges took their places on a raised
platform of no great size in front of a green table.
They wore hats cockaded and crowned with great
black plumes and the official cloak with a tricolour

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

137

riband from which a heavy silver medal was suspend-
ed on the breast. In front of them at the foot of the
dais, sat the deputy of the Public Prosecutor, simi-
larly attired. The clerk of the court had a seat be-
tween the judges’ bench and the prisoner’s chair, at
present unoccupied. To Gamelin’s eyes these men
wore a different aspect from that of every day; they
seemed nobler, graver, more alarming, albeit their
bearing was commonplace enough as they turned
over papers, beckoned to an usher or leant back to
listen to some communication from a juryman or
an officer of the court.

Above the judges’ heads hung the tables of the
Rights of Man; to their right and left, against the
old feudal walls, the busts of Le Peltier Saint-
Fargeau and Marat. Facing the jury bench, at the
lower end of the hall, rose the public gallery. The
first row of seats was filled by women, who all, fair,
brown and grey-haired alike, wore the high coif with
the pleated tucker shading their cheeks; the breast,
which invariably, as decreed by the fashion of the
day, showed the amplitude of the nursing mother’s
bosom, was covered with a crossed white kerchief
or the rounded bib of a blue apron. They sat with
folded arms resting on the rail of the tribune. Be-
hind them, scattered about the rising tiers, could be
seen a sprinkling of citizens dressed in the varied
garb which at that date gave every gathering so
striking and picturesque a character. On the right
hand, near the doors, behind a broad barrier, a space
was reserved where the public could stand. On this
occasion it was nearly empty. The business that
was to occupy the attention of this particular
section of the tribunal interested only a few
spectators, while doubtless the other sections sitting

138

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

at the same hour would be hearing more exciting
cases.

This fact somewhat reassured Gamelin; his heart
was like to fail him as it was, and he could not have
endured the heated atmosphere of one of the great
days. His eyes took in the most trifling details of
the scene, — the cotton-wool in the greffiers ear and
a blot of ink on the Deputy Prosecutor’s papers.
He could see, as through a magnifying glass, the
capitals of the pillars sculptured at a time when all
knowledge of the classical orders was forgotten and
which crowned the Gothic columns with wreaths
of nettle and holly. But wherever he looked, his
gaze came back again and again to the fatal chair;
this was of an antiquated make, covered in red
Utrecht velvet, the seat worn and the arms black-
ened with use. Armed National Guards stood guard-
ing every door.

At last the accused appeared, escorted by grena-
diers, but with limbs unbound, as the law directed.
He was a man of fifty or thereabouts, lean and dry,
with a brown face, a very bald head, hollow cheeks
and thin livid lips, dressed in an out-of-date coat of
a sanguine red. No doubt it was fever that made
his eyes glitter like jewels and gave his cheeks their
shiny, varnished look. He took his seat. His legs,
which he crossed, were extraordinarily spare and
his great knotted hands met round the knees they
clasped. His name was Marie-Adolphe Guillergues,
and he was accused of malversation in the supply of
forage to the Republican troops. The act of indict-
ment laid to his charge numerous and serious offences,
of which no single one was positively certain. Under
examination, Guillergues denied the majority of the
charges and explained the rest in a light favourable

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 139

to himself. He spoke in a cold, precise way, with
a marked ability and gave the impression of being a
dangerous man to have business dealings with. He
had an answer for everything. When the judge
asked him an embarrassing question, his face re-
mained unmoved and his voice confident, but his
two hands, folded on his breast, kept twitching in
an agony. Gamelin was struck by this and whis-
pered to the colleague sitting next him, a painter
like himself:

“Watch his thumbs!”

The first witness to depose alleged a number of
most damaging facts. He was the mainstay of the
prosecution. Those on the other hand who fol-
lowed showed themselves well disposed to the
prisoner. The Deputy of the Public Prosecutor spoke
strongly, but did not go beyond generalities. The
advocate for the defence adopted a tone of bluff
conviction of his client’s innocence that earned the
accused a sympathy he had failed to secure by his
own efforts. The sitting was suspended and the
jury assembled in the room set apart for delibera-
tion. There, after a confused and confusing dis-
cussion, they found themselves divided in two
groups about equal in number. On the one side
were the unemotional, the lukewarm, the men of
reason, whom no passion could stir, on the other the
kind who let their feelings guide them, who prove
all but inaccessible to argument and only consult
their heart. These always voted guilty. They were
the true metal, pure and unadulterated; their only
thought was to save the Republic and they cared
not a straw for anything else. Their attitude made
a strong impression on Gamelin who felt he was of
the same kidney himself.

140 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

“This Guillergues,” he thought to himself, “is
a cunning scamp, a villain who has speculated in
the forage supplied to our cavalry. To acquit him
is to let a traitor escape, to be false to the father-
land, to devote the army to defeat.” And in a flash
Gamelin could see the Hussars of the Republic,
mounted on stumbling horses, sabred by the
enemy’s cavalry. , . . “ But if Guillergues was in-
nocent . . .?”

Suddenly he remembered Jean Blaise, likewise
suspected of bad faith in the matter of supplies.
There were bound to be many others acting like Guil-
lergues and Blaise, contriving disaster, ruining the
Republic! An example must be made. But if Guil-
lergues was innocent . . . ?

“There are no proofs,” said Gamelin, aloud.

“There never are,” retorted the foreman of the
jury, shrugging his shoulders; he was good metal,
pure metal!

In the end, there proved to be seven votes for
condemnation, eight for acquittal.

The jury re-entered the hall and the sitting was
resumed. The jurors were required to give reasons
for their verdict, and each spoke in turn facing the
empty chair. Some were prolix, others confined
themselves to a sentence; one or two talked unin-
telligible gabble.

When Gamelin’s turn came, he rose and said:

“In presence of a crime so heinous as that of rob-
bing the defenders of the fatherland of the sinews
of victory, we need formal proofs which we have
not got.”

By a majority of votes the accused was declared
not guilty.

Guillergues was brought in again and stood before

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

141

his judges amid a hum of sympathy from the spec-
tators which conveyed the news of his acquittal to
him. He was another man. His features had lost
their harshness, his lips were relaxed again. He
looked venerable; his face bore the impression of
innocence. The President read out in tones of emo-
tion the verdict releasing the prisoner; the audience
broke into applause. The gendarme who had
brought Guillergues in threw himself into his arms.
The President called him to the dais and gave him
the embrace of brotherhood. The jurors kissed
him, while Gamelin’s eyes rained hot tears.

The courtyard of the Palais, dimly lighted by the
last rays of the setting sun, was filled with a howl-
ing, excited crowd. The four sections of the Tri-
bunal had the day before pronounced thirty sentences
of death, and on the steps of the Great Stairway a
throng of tricoteuses squatted to see the tumbrils
start. But Gamelin, as he descended the steps
among the press of jurors and spectators, saw noth-
ing, heard nothing but his own act of justice and
humanity and the self-congratulation he felt at hav-
ing recognized innocence. In the courtyard stood
Elodie, all in white, smiling through her tears; she
threw herself into his arms and lay there half faint-
ing. When she had recovered her voice, she said
to him:

“Evariste, you are noble, you are good, you are
generous! In the hall there, your voice, so gentle
and manly, went right through me with its mag-
netic waves. It electrified me. I gazed at you on
your bench, I could see no one but you. But you,
dear heart, you never guessed I was there? Noth-
ing told you I was present? I sat in the gallery in
the second row to the right. By heaven! how sweet

142 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

it is to do the right! you saved that unhappy man’s
life. Without you, it was all over with him; he was
as good as dead. You have given him back to life
and the love of his friends. At this moment he must
bless you. Evariste, how happy I am and how proud
to love you!”

Arm in arm, pressed close to one another, they
went along the streets; their bodies felt so light they
seemed to be flying.

They went to the Amour peintre. On reaching the
Oratoire :

“Better not go through the shop,”£lodiesuggested.

She made him go in by the main coach-door and
mount the stairs with her to the suite of rooms
above. On the landing she drew out of her reticule
a heavy iron key.

“It might be the key of a prison,” she exclaimed,
“Evariste, you are going to be my prisoner.”

They crossed the dining-room and were in the
girl’s bed-chamber.

Evariste felt upon his the ardent freshness of
Elodie’s lips. He pressed her in his arms; with head
thrown back and swooning eyes, her hair flowing
loose over her relaxed form, half fainting, she
escaped his hold and ran to shoot the bolt. . . .

The night was far advanced when the citoyenne
Blaise opened the outer door of the flat for her lover
and whispered to him in the darkness.

“Good-bye, sweetheart! it is the hour my father
will be coming home. If you hear a noise on the
stairs, go up quick to the higher floor and don't
come down till all danger is over of your being seen.
To have the street-door opened, give three raps on
the concierge's window. Good-bye, my life, good-
bye, my soul!”

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

143

When he found himself in the street, he saw the
window of Elodie’s chamber half unclose and a little
hand pluck a red carnation, which fell at his feet
like a drop of blood.

XII

NE evening when old Brotteaux ar-
rived in the Rue de la Loi bringing a
gross of dancing-dolls for the citoyen
Caillou, the toy-merchant, the latter,
a soft-spoken, polite man as a rule,
stood there stiff and stern among his
dolls and punch-and-judies and gave
him a far from gracious welcome.

“Have a care, citoyen Brotteaux,” he began, “have
a care! There is a time to laugh, and a time to be
serious; jokes are not always in good taste. A
member of the Committee of Security of the Sec-
tion, who inspected my establishment yesterday,
saw your dancing-dolls and deemed them anti-
revolutionary.”

“He was jesting!” declared Brotteaux.

“Not so, citoyen, not at all. He is not the man to
joke. He said in these little fellows the National
representatives were insidiously mimicked, that in
particular one could discover caricatures of Couthon,
Saint-Just and Robespierre, and he seized the lot.
It is a dead loss to me, to say nothing of the grave
risks to which I am exposed.”

“What! these Harlequins, these Gilles, these
Scaramouches, these Colins and Colinettes, which I
have painted the same as Boucher used to fifty years
ago, how should they be parodies of Couthons and
Saint-Justs? No sensible man could imagine such
a thing.”

“It is possible,” replied the citoyen Caillou, “that

144

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 145

you acted without malice, albeit we must always
distrust a man of parts like you. But it is a danger-
ous game. Shall I give you an instance? Natoile,
who runs a little outdoor theatre in the Champs
Elysees, was arrested the day before yesterday for
anti-patriotism, because he made Polichinelle poke
fun at the Convention.”

“Now listen to me,” Brotteaux urged, raising
the cloth that covered his little dangling figures;
“just look at these masks and faces, are they any-
thing else whatever but characters in plays and
pastorals? How could you let yourself be persuaded,
citoyen Caillou, that I was making fun of the Na-
tional Convention ? ”

Brotteaux was dumfounded. While allowing
much for human folly, he had not thought it possi-
ble it could ever go so far as to suspect his Scara-
mouches and Colinettes. Repeatedly he protested
their innocence and his; but the citoyen Caillou
would not hear a word.

“ Citoyen Brotteaux, take your dolls away. I
esteem you, I honour you, but I do not mean to
incur blame or get into trouble because of you. I
intend to remain a good citizen and to be treated
as such. Good evening, citoyen Brotteaux; take
your dolls away.”

The old man set out again for home, carrying his
suspects over his shoulder at the end of a pole, an
object of derision to the children, who took him for
the hawker of rat-poison. His thoughts were
gloomy. No doubt, he did not live only by his
dancing-dolls; he used to paint portraits at twenty
sols apiece, under the archways of doors or in one
of the market halls, among the darners and old-
clothes menders, where he found many a young
10

146 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

recruit starting for the front and wanting to leave
his likeness behind for his sweetheart. But these
petty tasks cost him endless pains, and he was a
long way from making as good portraits as he did
dancing-dolls. Sometimes, too, he acted as amanuen-
sis for the Market dames, but this meant mixing
himself up in Royalist plots, and the risks were
heavy. He remembered there lived in the Rue
Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, near the erstwhile Place
Vendome, another toy-merchant, Joly by name,
and he resolved to go next day to offer him the goods
the chicken-hearted Caillou had declined.

A fine rain began to fall. Brotteaux who feared
its effects on his marionettes, quickened his pace.
As he crossed the Pont-Neuf and was turning the
corner of the Place de Thionville, he saw by the
light of a street-lamp, sitting on a stone post, a lean
old man who seemed utterly exhausted with fatigue
and hunger, but still preserved his venerable ap-
pearance. He was dressed in a tattered surtout,
had no hat and appeared over sixty. Approaching
the poor wretch, Brotteaux recognised the Pere
Longuemare, the same he had saved from hanging
six months before while both of them were waiting
in queue in front of the bakery in the Rue de Jeru-
salem. Feeling bound to the monk by the service
he had already done him, Brotteaux stepped up to
him and made himself known as the publican who
had stood beside him among the common herd, one
day of great scarcity, and asked him if he could not
be of some use to him.

“You seem wearied, Father. Take a taste of
cordial,” — and Brotteaux drew from the pocket of
his plum-coloured coat a flask of brandy, which lay
there alongside his Lucretius.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 147

“Drink. And I will help you to get back to your
house.”

The Pere Longuemare pushed away the flask with
his hand and tried to rise, but only to fall back again
in his seat.

“Sir,” he said in a weak but firm voice, “for three
months I have been living at Picpus. Being warned
they had come to arrest me at my lodging, yester-
day at five o’clock of the afternoon, I did not return
home. I have no place to go to; I am wandering
the streets and am a little fatigued.”

“Very well, Father,” proposed Brotteaux, “do
me the honour to share my garret.”

“Sir,” replied the Barnabite, “you know, I sup-
pose, I am a suspect.”

“I am one too,” said Brotteaux, “and my marion-
ettes into the bargain, which is the worst thing of
all. You see them exposed under this flimsy cloth
to the fine rain that chills our bones. For, I must
tell you. Father, that after having been a publican,
I now make dancing-dolls for a living.”

The Pere Longuemare took the hand the ci-devant
financier extended to him and accepted the hos-
pitality offered. Brotteaux, in his garret, served
him a meal of bread and cheese and wine, which
last he had put to cool in the rain-gutter, for was
he not a Sybarite?

Having appeased his hunger:

“Sir,” said the Pere Longuemare, “I ought to
inform you of the circumstances that led to my flight
and left me to die on yonder post where you found
me. Driven from my cloister, I lived on the scanty
allowance the Assembly had assigned to me; I gave
lessons in Latin and Mathematics and I wrote
pamphlets on the persecution of the Church of

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

France. I have even composed a work of some
length, to prove that the Constitutional oath of the
Priests is subversive of Ecclesiastical discipline.
The advances made by the Revolution deprived me
of all my pupils, while I could not get my pension
because I had not the certificate of citizenship re-
quired by law. This certificate I went to the Hotel
de Ville to claim, in the conviction I was well en-
titled to it. Member of an order founded by the
Apostle Paul himself, who boasted the title of Roman
citizen, I always piqued myself on behaving after
his example as a good French citizen, a respecter of
all human laws which are not in opposition to the
Divine. I presented my demand to Monsieur Colin,
pork-butcher and Municipal officer, in charge of the
delivery of certificates of the sort. He questioned
me as to my calling. I told him I was a Priest. He
asked me if I was married, and on my answering
that I was not, he told me that was the worse for
me. Finally, after a variety of questions, he asked
me if I had proved my citizenship on the ioth
August, the 2nd September and the 31st May. ►‘No
certificates can be given,’ he added, ‘except to
such as have proved their patriotism by their be-
haviour on these three occasions.’ I could not give
him an answer that would satisfy him. However,
he took down my name and address and promised
me to make prompt enquiry into my case. He kept
his word, and as the result of his enquiry two Com-
missioners of the Committee of General Security of
Picpus, supported by an armed band, presented
themselves at my lodging in my absence to conduct
me to prison. I do not know of what crime I am
accused. But you will agree with me one must pity
Monsieur Colin, whose wits are so clouded he holds

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149

it a reproach to an ecclesiastic not to have made
display of his patriotism on the ioth August, the
2nd September, and the 31st May. A man capable
of such a notion is surely deserving of commisera-
tion.”

“I am in the same plight, I have no certificate,”
observed Brotteaux. “We are both suspects. But
you are weary. To bed, Father. We will discuss
plans to-morrow for your safety.”

He gave the mattress to his guest and kept the
palliasse for himself; but the monk in his humility
demanded the latter with so much urgency that his
wish had to be complied with; otherwise he would
have slept on the boards.

These arrangements completed, Brotteaux blew
out the candle both to save tallow and as a wise
precaution.

“Sir,” the monk addressed him, “I am thankful
for what you are doing for me; but alas! it is of
small moment to you whether I am grateful or no.
May God account your act meritorious! That is of
infinite concern for you. But God pays no heed to
what is not done for his glory and is merely the out-
come of purely natural virtue. Wherefore I beseech

you, sir, to do for Him what you were led to do for

_ - 99
me.

“ Father, ” answered Brotteaux, “never trouble
yourself on this head and do not think of gratitude.
What I am doing now, the merit of which you exag-
gerate, — is not done for any love of you; for indeed,
albeit you are a lovable man, Father, I know you
too little to love you. Nor yet do I act so for love
of humanity; for I am not so simple as to think with
* Don Juan’ that humanity has rights; indeed this
prejudice, in a mind so emancipated as his, grieves

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me. I do it out of that selfishness which inspires
mankind to perform all their deeds of generosity
and self-sacrifice, by making them recognize them-
selves in all who are unfortunate, by disposing them
to commiserate their own calamities in the calam-
ities of others and by inciting them to offer help to
a mortal resembling themselves in nature and des-
tiny, so that they think they are succouring them-
selves in succouring him. I do it also for lack of
anything better to do; for life is so desperately in-
sipid we must find distraction at any cost, and
benevolence is an amusement, of a mawkish sort,
one indulges in for want of any more savoury; I do
it out of pride and to get an advantage over you;
I do it, in a word, as part of a system and to show
you what an atheist is capable of.”

“Do not calumniate yourself, sir,” replied the
Pere Longuemare. “I have received of God more
marks of grace than He has accorded you hitherto;
but I am not as good a man as you, and am greatly
your inferior in natural merits. But now let me
take an advantage too over you. Not knowing me,
you cannot love me. And I, sir, without knowing
you, I love you better than myself; God bids me
do so.”

Having so said, the Pere Longuemare knelt down
on the floor, and after repeating his prayers, stretched
himself on his palliasse and fell peacefully asleep.

XIII

JVARISTE GAMELIN occupied his
place as juror of the Tribunal for the
second time. Before the opening of
the sitting, he discussed with his col-
leagues the news that had arrived that
morning. Some of it was doubtful,
some untrue; but part was authentic
— and appalling; the armies of the coalition in com-
mand of all the roads and marching en masse on
Paris, La Vendee triumphant, Lyons in insurrec-
tion, Toulon surrendered to the English, who were
landing fourteen thousand men there.

For him and his fellow magistrates these were not
only events of interest to all the world, but so many
matters of domestic concern. Foredoomed to perish
in the ruin of the fatherland, they made the public
salvation their own proper business. The Nation’s
interests, thus entangled with their own, dictated
their opinions and passions and conduct.

Gamelin, where he sat on the jury bench, was
handed a letter from Trubert, Secretary of the Com-
mittee of Defence; it was to notify his appointment
as Commissioner of Supplies of Powder and Salt-
petre:

“ You will excavate all the cellars in the Section in order to extract
the substances necessary for the manufacture of powder. To-morrow
perhaps the enemy will be before Paris; the soil of the fatherland must
provide us with the lightning we shall launch against our aggressors.
I send you herewith a schedule of instructions from the Convention
regarding the manipulation of saltpetres. Farewell and brotherly
greeting

151

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

At that moment the accused was brought in. He
was one of the last of the defeated Generals whom
the Convention delivered over one after the other
to the Tribunal, and the most insignificant. At
sight of him Gamelin shuddered; once again he
seemed to see the same soldier whom three weeks
before, looking on as a spectator, he had seen sen-
tenced and sent to the guillotine. The man was
the same, with his obstinate, opinionated look; the
procedure was the same. He gave his answers in a
cunning, brutish way that ruined the effect even of
the most convincing. His cavilling and chicanery
and the accusations he levelled against his subor-
dinates, made you forget he was fulfilling the hon-
ourable task of defending his honour and his life.
Everything was uncertain, every statement dis-
puted, — position of the armies, total of forces en-
gaged, munitions of war, orders given, orders
received, movements of troops; nobody knew any-
thing. It was impossible to make head or tail of
these confused, nonsensical, aimless operations which
had ended in disaster; defending counsel and the
accused himself were as much in the dark as were
accuser, judges, and jury, and strange to say, not a
soul would admit, whether to himself or to other
people, that this was the case. The judges took a
childish delight in drawing plans and discussing
problems of tactics and strategy, while the prisoner
constantly betrayed his inborn predilection for
crooked ways.

The arguments dragged on endlessly. And all the
time Gamelin could see on the rough roads of the
north the ammunition wagons stogged in the mire
and the guns capsized in the ruts, and along all the
ways the broken and beaten columns flying in dis-

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153

order, while from all sides the enemy’s cavalry was
debouching by the abandoned defiles. And from
this host of men betrayed he could hear a mighty
shout going up in accusation of the General. When
the hearing closed, darkness was falling on the hall,
and the head of Marat gleamed half-seen like a
phantom above the President’s head. The jury was
called upon to give judgment, but was of two minds.
Gamelin, in a hoarse, strangled voice, but in reso-
lute accents, declared the accused guilty of treason
against the Republic, and a murmur of approval
rose from the crowd, a flattering unction to his
youthful virtue. The sentence was read by the light
of torches which cast a lurid, uncertain gleam on
the prisoner’s hollow temples beaded with drops of
sweat. Outside the doors, on the steps crowded
with the customary swarm of cockaded harridans,
Gamelin could hear his name, which the habitues of
the Tribunal were beginning to know, passed from
mouth to mouth, and was assailed by a bevy of
tricoteuses who shook their fists in his face, demand-
ing the head of the Austrian .

The next day Evariste had to give judgment on
the fate of a poor woman, the widow Meyrion. She
distributed bread from house to house and tramped
the streets pushing a little hand-cart and carrying
a wooden tally hung at her waist, on which she cut
notches with her knife representing the number of
the loaves she had delivered. Her gains amounted
to eight sous a day. The deputy of the Public Pro-
secutor displayed an extraordinary virulence towards
the wretched creature, who had, it appears, shouted
“Vive le Roi!” on several occasions, uttered anti-
revolutionary remarks in the houses where she called
to leave the daily dole of bread, and been mixed up

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

in a plot for the escape of the woman Capet. In
answer to the Judge’s question she admitted the
facts alleged against her; whether fool or fanatic,
she professed Royalist sentiments of the most en-
thusiastic sort and waited her doom.

The Revolutionary Tribunal made a point of
proving the triumph of Equality by showing itself
just as severe for street-porters and servant maids
as for the aristocrats and financiers. Gamelin could
conceive no other system possible under a popular
government. He would have deemed it a mark of
contempt, an insult to the people, to exclude it from
punishment. That would have been to consider it,
so to speak, as unworthy of chastisement by the
law. Reserved for aristocrats only, the guillotine
would have appeared to him in the light of an in-
iquitous privilege. In his thoughts he was begin-
ning to erect chastisement into a religious and mystic
dogma, to assign it a virtue, a merit of its own; he
conceived that society owes punishment to crim-
inals and that it is doing them an injustice to cheat
them of this right. He declared the woman Meyrion
guilty and deserving of death, only regretting that
the fanatics, more culpable than herself, who had
brought her to her ruin, were not there to share her
fate.

Every evening almost Evariste attended the meet-
ings of the Jacobins, who assembled in the former
chapel of the Dominicans, commonly known as
Jacobins, in the Rue Honore. In a courtyard, in
which stood a tree of Liberty, a poplar whose leaves
shook and rustled all day in the wind, the chapel,
built in a poor, clumsy style and surmounted by a
heavy roof of tiles, showed its bare gable, pierced by

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

155

a round window and an arched doorway, above which
floated the National colours, the flagstaff crowned
with the cap of Liberty. The Jacobins, like the Cor-
deliers, and the Feuillants, had appropriated the
premises and taken the name of the dispossessed
monks. Gamelin, once a regular attendant at the
sittings of the Cordeliers, did not find at the Jacobins
the familiar sabots, carmagnoles and rallying cries
of the Dantonists. In Robespierre’s club adminis-
trative reserve and bourgeois gravity were the order
of the day. The Friend of the People was no more,
and since his death Evariste had followed the lessons
of Maximilien whose thought ruled the Jacobins,
and thence, through a thousand affiliated societies
was disseminated over all France. During the read-
ing of the minutes, his eyes wandered over the bare,
dismal walls, which, after sheltering the spiritual
sons of the arch-inquisitor of heresy, now looked
down on the assemblage of zealous inquisitors of
crimes against the fatherland.

There, without pomp or ceremony, sat the body
that was the chiefest power of the State and ruled
by force of words. It governed the city, the empire,
dictated its decrees to the Convention itself. These
artisans of the new order of things, so respectful of
the law that they continued Royalists in 1791 and
would fain have been Royalists still on the King’s re-
turn from Varennes, so obstinate in their attachment
to the Constitution, friends of the established order
of the State even after the massacres of the Champ-
de-Mars, and never revolutionaries against the
Revolution, heedless of popular agitation, cherished
in their dark and puissant soul a love of the father-
land that had given birth to fourteen armies and set
up the guillotine. Evariste was lost in admiration of

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

their vigilance, their suspicious temper, their rea-
soned dogmatism, their love of system, their su-
premacy in the art of governing, their sovereign
sanity.

The public that formed the audience gave no
token of their presence save a low, long-drawn mur-
mur as of one voice, like the rustling of the leaves
of the tree of Liberty that stood outside the thresh-
old. <

That day, the nth Vendemiaire, a young man,
with a receding brow, a piercing eye, a sharp prom-
inent nose, a pointed chin, a pock-marked face, a
look of cold self-possession, mounted the tribune
slowly. His hair was white with powder and he
wore a blue coat that displayed his slim figure. He
showed the precise carriage and moved with the
cadenced step that made some say in mockery that
he was like a dancing-master and earned him from
others the name of the “French Orpheus.” Robes-
pierre, speaking in a clear voice, delivered an elo-
quent discourse against the enemies of the Republic.
He belaboured with metaphysical and uncompro-
mising arguments Brissot and his accomplices. He
spoke at great length, in free-flowing harmonious
periods. Soaring in the celestial spheres of philoso-
phy, he launched his lightnings at the base con-
spirators crawling on the ground.

Evariste heard and understood. Till then he had
blamed the Gironde; were they not working for the
restoration of the monarchy or the triumph of the
Orleans faction, were they not planning the ruin of
the heroic city that had delivered France from her
fetters and would one day deliver the universe?
Now, as he listened to the sage’s voice, he discerned
truths of a higher and purer compass; he grasped

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 157

a revolutionary metaphysic which lifted his mind
above coarse, material conditions into a region of
absolute, unqualified convictions, untrammelled by
the errors of the senses. Things are in their nature
involved and full of confusion; the complexity of
circumstances is such that we lose our way amongst
them. Robespierre simplified them to his mind, put
good and evil before him in clear and precise for-
mulas. Federalism, — indivisibility; unity and indi-
visibility meant salvation, federalism, damnation.
Gamelin tasted the ineffable joy of a believer who
knows the word that saves and the word that de-
stroys the soul. Henceforth the Revolutionary
Tribunal, as of old the ecclesiastical courts, would
take cognizance of crime absolute, of crime definable
in a word. And, because he had the religious spirit,
Evariste welcomed these revelations with a sombre
enthusiasm; his heart swelled and rejoiced at the
thought that, henceforth, he had a talisman to dis-
cern betwixt crime and innocence, he possessed a
creed! Ye stand in lieu of all else, oh, treasures of
faith!

The sage Maximilien enlightened him further as
to the perfidious intent of those who were for equal-
izing property and partitioning the land, abolishing
wealth and poverty and establishing a happy medi-
ocrity for all. Misled by their specious maxims, he
had originally approved their designs, which he
deemed in accord with the principles of a true Re-
publican. But Robespierre, in his speeches at the
Jacobins, had unmasked their machinations and
convinced him that these men, disinterested as
their intentions appeared, were working to over-
throw the Republic, that they were alarming the
rich only to rouse against the lawful authority power-

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

ful and implacable foes. Once private property was
threatened, the whole population, the more ardently
attached to its possessions the less of these it owned,
would turn suddenly against the Republic. To ter-
rify vested interests is to conspire against the State.
These men who, under pretence of securing univer-
sal happiness and the reign of justice, proposed a
system of equality and community of goods as a
worthy object of good citizens 5 endeavours, were
traitors and malefactors more dangerous than the
Federalists.

But the most startling revelation he owed to
Robespierre’s wisdom was that of the crimes and in-
famies of atheism. Gamelin had never denied the
existence of God; he was a deist and believed in a
Providence that watches over mankind; but, ad-
mitting that he could form only a very vague con-
ception of the Supreme Being and deeply attached
to the principle of freedom of conscience, he was
quite ready to allow that right-thinking men might
follow the example of Lamettrie, Boulanger, the
Baron d’Holbach, Lalande, Helvetius, the citoyen
Dupuis, and deny God’s existence, on condition they
formulated a natural morality and found in them-
selves the sources of justice and the rules of a vir-
tuous life. He had even felt himself in sympathy
with the atheists, when he had seen them vilified and
persecuted. Maximilien had opened his mind and
unsealed his eyes. The great man by his virtuous
eloquence had taught him the true character of
atheism, its nature, its objects, its effects; he had
shown him how this doctrine, conceived in the draw-
ing-rooms and boudoirs of the aristocracy, was the
most perfidious invention the enemies of the people
had ever devised to demoralize and enslave it; how

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159

it was a criminal act to uproot from the heart of the
unfortunate the consoling thought of a Providence
to reward and compensate and give them over with-
out rein or bit to the passions that degrade men and
make vile slaves of them; how, in fine, the monarch-
ical Epicureanism of a Helvetius led to immorality,
cruelty, and every wickedness. Now that he had
learnt these lessons from the lips of a great man and
a great citizen, he execrated the atheists — especially
when they were of an open-hearted, joyous temper,
like his old friend Brotteaux.

In the days that followed Evariste had to give
judgment one after the other on a ci-devant con-
victed of having destroyed wheat-stuff's in order to
starve the people, three emigres who had returned
to foment civil war in France, two ladies of pleasure
of the Palais-Egalite, fourteen Breton conspirators,
men, women, old men, youths, masters, and servants.
The crime was proven, the law explicit. Among the
guilty was a girl of twenty, adorable in the heyday
of her young beauty under the shadow of the doom
so soon to overwhelm her, a fascinating figure. A
blue bow bound her golden locks, her lawn kerchief
revealed a white, graceful neck.

Evariste was consistent in casting his vote for
death, and all the accused, with the one exception
of an old gardener, were sent to the scaffold.

The following week Evariste and his section mowed
down sixty-three heads — forty-five men and eighteen
women.

The judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal drew
no distinction between men and women, in this fol-
lowing a principle as old as justice itself. True, the
President Montane, touched by the bravery and

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beauty of Charlotte Corday, had tried to save her
by paltering with the procedure of the trial and had
thereby lost his seat, but women as a rule were
shown no favour under examination, in strict accord-
ance with the rule common to all the tribunals.
The jurors feared them, distrusting their artful ways,
their aptitude for deception, their powers of seduc-
tion. They were the match of men in resolution,
and this invited the Tribunal to treat them in the
same way. The majority of those who sat in judg-
ment, men of normal sensuality or sensual on occa-
sion, were in no wise affected by the fact that the
prisoner was a woman. They condemned or ac-
quitted them as their conscience, their zeal, their
love, lukewarm or vehement, for the Republic dic-
tated. Almost always they appeared before the
court with their hair carefully dressed and attired
with as much elegance as the unhappy conditions
allowed. But few of them were young and still fewer
pretty. Confinement and suspense had blighted
them, the harsh light of the hall betrayed their
weariness and the anguish they had endured, beat-
ing down on faded lids, blotched and pimpled cheeks,
white, drawn lips. Nevertheless, the fatal chair more
than once held a young girl, lovely in her pallor, while
a shadow of the tomb veiled her eyes and made her
beauty the more seductive. That the sight had the
power to melt some jurymen and irritate others, who
should deny? That, in the secret depraved heart of
him, one of these magistrates may have pried into
the most sacred intimacies of the fair body that was
to his morbid fancy at the same moment a living and
a dead woman’s, and that, gloating over voluptu-
ous and ghoulish imaginings he may have found an
atrocious pleasure in giving over to the headsman

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 161

those dainty, desirable limbs, — this is perhaps a
thing better left unsaid, but one which no one can
deem impossible who knows what men are. Evariste
Gamelin, cold and pedantic in his artistic creed,
could see no beauty but in the Antique; he admired
beauty, but it hardly stirred his senses. His clas-
sical taste was so severe he rarely found a woman
to his liking; he was as insensible to the charms of a
pretty face as he was to Fragonard’s colouring and
Boucher’s drawing. He had never known desire save
under the form of deep passion.

Like the majority of his colleagues in the Tribunal,
he thought women more dangerous than men. He
hated the ci-devant princesses, the creatures he pic-
tured to himself in his horrified dreams in company
with Elisabeth and the Austrian weaving plots to
assassinate good patriots; he even hated all those
fair mistresses of financiers, philosophers, and men
of letters whose only crime was having enjoyed the
pleasures of the senses and the mind and lived at a
time when it was sweet to live. He hated them with-
out admitting the feeling to himself, and when he
had one before him at the bar, he condemned her
out of pique, convinced all the while that he was
dooming her justly and rightly for the public good.
His sense of honour, his manly modesty, his cold,
calculated wisdom, his devotion to the State, his
virtues in a word, pushed under the knife heads that
might well have moved men’s pity.

But what is this, what is the meaning of this
strange prodigy? Once the difficulty was to find the
guilty, to search them out in their lair, to drag the
confession of their crime from reluctant lips. Now,
there is no hunting with a great pack of sleuth-
hounds, no pursuing a timid prey; lo! from all sides
u

162 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

come the victims to offer themselves a voluntary
sacrifice. Nobles, virgins, soldiers, courtesans, flock
to the Tribunal, dragging their condemnation from
dilatory judges, claiming death as a right which
they are impatient to enjoy. Not enough the multi-
tude with which the zeal of the informers has crowded
the prisons and which the Public Prosecutor and his
myrmidons are wearing out their lives in haling be-
fore the Tribunal; punishment must likewise be
provided for those who refuse to wait. And how many
others, prouder and more pressing yet, begrudging
their judges and headsmen their death, perish by
their own hand! The mania of killing is equalled by j
the mania to die. Here, in the Conciergerie, is a
young soldier, handsome, vigorous, beloved; he
leaves behind him in the prison an adorable mis-
tress; she bade him “Live for me!” — he will live
neither for her nor love nor glory. He lights his
pipe with his act of accusation. And, a Republican,
for he breathes liberty through every pore, he turns
Royalist that he may die. The Tribunal tries its
best to save him, but the accused proves the stronger;
judges and jury are forced to let him have his way.

Evariste’s mind, naturally of an anxious, scrupu-
lous cast, was filled to overflowing through the les-
sons he learned at the Jacobins and the contempla-
tion of life with suspicions and alarms. At night,
as he paced the ill-lighted streets on his way to
Elodie’s, he fancied through every cellar-grating he
passed he caught a glimpse of a plate for printing
off forged assignats; in the dark recesses of the
baker’s and grocer’s empty shops he imagined store-
rooms bursting with provisions fraudulently held
back for a rise in prices; looking in at the glittering
windows of the eating-houses, he seemed to hear the

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163

talk of the speculators plotting the ruin of the coun-
try as they drained bottles of Beaune and Chablis;
in the evil-smelling alleys he could see the very
prostitutes trampling underfoot the National cock-
ade to the applause of elegant young roisterers;
everywhere he beheld conspirators and traitors.
And he thought: “ Against so many foes, secret or
declared, oh! Republic thou hast but one succour;
Saint Guillotine, save the fatherland! . . ”

Elodie would be waiting for him in her little blue
chamber above the Amour peintre . To let him know
he might come in, she used to set on the window-sill
her little watering-can beside the pot of carnations.
Now he filled her with horror, he seemed like a mon-
ster to her; she was afraid of him, — and she adored
him. All the night, clinging together in a frantic
embrace, the bloody-minded lover and the amorous
girl exchanged in silence frenzied kisses.

xiy

ISING at dawn, the Pere Longuemare,
after sweeping out the room, departed
to say his Mass in a chapel in the
Rue d’Enfer served by a nonjuring
priest. There were in Paris thousands
of similar retreats, where the refrac-
tory clergy gathered together clan-
destinely little troops of the faithful. The police of
the Sections, vigilant and suspicious as they were,
kept their eyes shut to these hidden folds, from fear
of the exasperated flock and moved by some linger-
ing veneration for holy things. The Barnabite made
his farewells to his host who had great difficulty in
persuading him to come back to dine, and only suc-
ceeded in the end by promising that the cheer would
be neither plentiful nor delicate.

Brotteaux, when left to himself, kindled a little
earthenware stove; then, while he busied himself
with preparations for the Monk’s and the Epicurean’s
meal, he read in his Lucretius and meditated on
the conditions of human beings.

As a sage and a philosopher, he was not surprised
that these wretched creatures, silly playthings of the
forces of nature, found themselves more often than
not in absurd and painful situations; but he was
weak and illogical enough to believe that the Revo-
lutionaries were more wicked and more foolish than
other men, thereby falling into the error of the
metaphysician. At the same time he was no Pessi-

164

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 165

mist and did not hold that life was altogether bad.
He admired Nature in several of her departments,
especially the celestial mechanism and physical love,
and accommodated himself to the labours of life,
pending the arrival of the day, which could not be
far off, when he would have nothing more either to
fear or to desire.

He coloured some dancing-dolls with painstaking
care and made a Zerline that was very like Rose
Thevenin. He liked the girl and his Epicureanism
highly approved of the arrangement of the atoms of
which she was composed.

These tasks occupied him till the Barnabite’s
return.

“Father,” he announced, as he opened the door
to admit him, “I told you, you remember, that our
fare would be meagre. We have nothing but chest-
nuts. The more reason, therefore, they should be
well seasoned.”

“Chestnuts!” cried Pere Longuemare, smiling,
“there is no more delicious dish. My father, sir,
was a poor gentleman of the Limousin, whose whole
estate consisted of a pigeon-cote in ruins, an orchard
run wild and a clump of chestnut-trees. He fed him-
self, his wife and his twelve children on big green
chestnuts, and we were all strong and sturdy. I
was the youngest and the most turbulent; my father
used to declare, by way of jesting, he would have to
send me to America to be a filibuster. . . . Ah! sir,
how fragrant your chestnut soup smells! It takes
me back to the table where my mother sat smiling,
surrounded by her troop of little ones.”

The repast ended, Brotteaux set out for Joly’s,
the toy-merchant in the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-
Champs, who took the dancing-dolls Caillou had

166 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

refused, and ordered — not another gross of them like
the latter, but a round twenty-four dozen to begin
with.

On reaching the erstwhile Rue Royale and turn-
ing into the Place de la Revolution, Brotteaux caught
sight of a steel triangle glittering between two wooden
uprights; it was the guillotine. An immense crowd
of light-hearted spectators pressed round the scaf-
fold, waiting the arrival of the loaded carts. Women
were hawking Nanterre cakes on a tray hung in
front of them and crying their wares; sellers of cool-
ing drinks were tinkling their little bells; at the
foot of the Statue of Liberty an old man had a peep-
show in a small booth surmounted by a swing on
which a monkey played its antics. Underneath the
scaffold some dogs were licking yesterday’s blood.
Brotteaux turned back towards the Rue Honore.

Regaining his garret, where the Barnabite was
reading his breviary, he carefully wiped the table
and arranged his colour-box on it alongside the ma-
terials and tools of his trade.

“Father,” he said, “if you do not deem the occu-
pation unworthy of the sacred character with which
you are invested, I will ask you to help me make
my marionettes. A worthy tradesman, Joly by
name, has this very morning given me a pretty heavy
order. Whilst I am painting these figures already
put together, you will do me a great service by cut-
ting out heads, arms, legs, and bodies from the pat-
terns here. Better you could not find; they are
after Watteau and Boucher.”

“I agree with you, sir,” replied Longuemare,
“that Watteau and Boucher were well fitted to
create such-like baubles; it had been more to their
glory if they had confined themselves to innocent

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167

figures like these. I should be delighted to help
you, but I fear I may not be clever enough for
that”

The Pere Longuemare was right to distrust his
own skill; after sundry unsuccessful attempts, the
fact was patent that his genius did not lie in the
direction of cutting out pretty shapes in thin card-
board with the point of a penknife. But when, at
his suggestion, Brotteaux gave him some string and
a bodkin, he showed himself very apt in endowing
with motion the little creatures he had failed to
make and teaching them to dance. He had a happy
knack, by way of trying them afterwards, of making
them each execute three or four steps of a gavotte,
and when they rewarded his pains, a smile would
flicker on his stern lips.

One time when he was pulling the string of a
Scaramouch to a dance tune:

“ Sir, ” he observed, “this little travesty reminds
me of a quaint story. It was in 1746, when I was
completing my noviciate under the care of the Pere
Magitot, a man well on in years, of deep learning
and austere morals. At that period, you perhaps
remember, dancing figures, intended in the first in-
stance to amuse children, exercised over women and
even over men, both young and old, an extraor-
dinary fascination; they were all the rage in Paris.
The fashionable shops were crammed with them;
they were to be found in the houses of people of
quality, and it was nothing out of the way to see
a grave and reverend senior dancing his doll in the
streets and public gardens. The Pere Magitot’s
age, character, and sacred profession did not avail
to guard him against infection. Every time he saw
anyone busy jumping his cardboard mannikin, his

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

fingers itched with impatience to be at the same
game, — an impatience that soon grew well nigh in-
tolerable. One day when he was paying a visit of
importance on a matter involving the interests of
the whole Order to Monsieur Chauvel, advocate in
the courts of the Parlement, noticing one of these
dancers hanging from the chimney-piece, he felt a
terrible temptation to pull its string, which he only
resisted at the cost of a tremendous effort. But this
frivolous ambition pursued him everywhere and left
him no peace. In his studies, in his meditations, in
his prayers, at church, at chapter, in the confessional
and in the pulpit, he was possessed by it. Afte^
some days of dreadful agony of mind, he laid bare
his extraordinary case to the General of the Order,
who happened fortunately to be in Paris at the
moment. He was an eminent ecclesiastic of Milan,
a Doctor and Prince of the Church. His counsel to
the Pere Magitot was to satisfy a craving, innocent
in its inception, importunate in its consequences and
inordinate in its excess, which threatened to super-
induce the gravest disorders in the soul which was
afflicted with it. On the advice, or more strictly by
the order of the General, the Pere Magitot returned
to Monsieur ChauvePs house, where the advocate
received him, as on the first occasion, in his cabinet.
There, finding the dancing figure still fastened in
the same place, he ran excitedly to the chimney-
piece and begged his host to do him a favour, — to
let him pull the string. The lawyer gave him his
permission very readily, and informed him in con-
fidence that sometimes he set Scaramouch (that
was the doll’s name) dancing while he was studying
his briefs, and that, only the night before, he had
modulated on Scaramouch’s movements the perora-

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169

tion of his speech in defence of a woman falsely
accused of poisoning her husband. The Pere Magitot
seized the string with trembling fingers and saw
Scaramouch throw his limbs wildly about under his
manipulation like one possessed of devils in the
agonies of exorcism.”

“Your tale does not surprise me, father,” Brot-
teaux told him, “We see such cases of obsession;
but it is not always cardboard figures that occa-
sion it.”

The Pere Longuemare, who was religious by
profession, never talked about religion, while Brot-
teaux was for ever harping on the subject. He was
conscious of a bond of sympathy between himself
and the Barnabite, and took a delight in embarrass-
ing and disturbing his peace of mind with objections
against divers articles of the Christian faith.

Once when they were working together making
Zerlines and Scaramouches:

“When I consider/’ remarked Brotteaux, “the
events which have brought us to the point at which
we stand, I am in doubt as to which party, in the
general madness, has been the most insane; some-
times, I am greatly tempted to believe it was that
of the Court.”

“Sir,” answered the Monk, “all men lose their
wits like Nebuchadnezzar, when God forsakes them;
but no man in our days ever plunged so deep in
ignorance and error as the Abbe Fauchet, no man
was so fatal as he to the kingdom. God must needs
have been sorely exasperated against France to send
her Monsieur TAbbe Fauchet!”

“I imagine we have seen other evil-doers besides
poor, unhappy Fauchet.”

“The Abbe Gregoire too, was full of malice.”

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“And Brissot, and Danton, and Marat, and a
hundred others, what of them, Father ?”

“Sir, they are laics; the laity could never incur
the same responsibilities as the clergy. They do not
work evil from so high a standpoint, and their crimes
are not of universal bearing.”

“And your God, Father, what say you of His be-
haviour in the present Revolution ?”

“I do not understand you, sir.”

“Epicurus said: Either God wishes to hinder evil
and cannot, or He can and does not wish to, or He
cannot nor does he wish to, or He does wish to and
can. If He wishes to and cannot, He is impotent;
if He can and does not wish to, He is perverse; if
He cannot nor does He wish to, He is impotent and
perverse; if He does wish to and can, why does He
not, tell me that, Father!” — and Brotteaux cast a
look of triumph at his interlocutor.

“Sir,” retorted the Monk, “there is nothing more
contemptible than these difficulties you raise. When
I look into the reasoning of infidels, I seem to see
ants piling up a few blades of grass as a dam against
the torrent that sweeps down from the mountains.
With your leave, I had rather not argue with you;
I should have too many excellent reasons and too
few wits to apply them. Besides, you will find your
refutation in the Abbe Guenee and twenty other
apologists. I will only say that what you quote
from Epicurus is foolishness; because God is ar-
raigned in it as if he was a man, with a man’s moral
code. Well! sir, the sceptics, from Celsus down to
Bayle and Voltaire, have cajoled fools with suchlike
paradoxes.”

“See, Father,” protested Brotteaux, “to what
lengths your faith makes you go. Not satisfied with

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 171

finding all truth in your Theology, you likewise re-
fuse to discover any in the works of so many noble
intellects who thought differently from yourselves.”

“You are entirely mistaken, sir,” replied Longue-
mare. “On the contrary, I believe that nothing
could ever be altogether false in a man’s thoughts.
The atheists stand on the lowest rung of the ladder
of knowledge; but even there, gleams of sense are
to be found and flashes of truth, and even when
darkness is thick about him, a man may lift up his
eyes to God, and He will put understanding in his
heart; was it not so with Lucifer?”

“Well, sir,” said Brotteaux, “I cannot match
your generosity and I am bound to tell you I cannot
find in all the works of the Theologians one atom of
good sense.”

At the same time he would repudiate any desire to
attack religion, which he deemed indispensable for
the nations; he could only wish it had for its minis-
ters philosophers instead of controversialists. He
deplored the fact that the Jacobins were for replac-
ing it by a newer and more pestilent religion, the
cult of liberty, equality, the republic, the fatherland.
He had observed this, that it is in the vigour of their
youth religions are the fiercest and most cruel, and
grow milder as they grow older. He was anxious,
therefore, to see Catholicism preserved; it had de-
voured many victims in the times of its vigour, but
nowadays, burdened by the weight of years and
with enfeebled appetite, it was content with roast-
ing four or five heretics in a hundred years.

“As a matter of fact,” he concluded, “I have al-
ways got on very well with your God-eaters and
Christ-worshippers. I kept a chaplain at Les Ilettes,
where Mass was said every Sunday and all my guests

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attended. The philosophers were the most devout
while the opera girls showed the most fervour. I
was prosperous then and had crowds of friends.”

“Friends,” exclaimed the Pere Longuemare,
“friends! Ah! sir, do you really think they loved
you, all these philosophers and all these courtesans,
who have degraded your soul in such wise that God
himself would find it hard to know it for one of the
temples built by Him for His glory?”

The Pere Longuemare lived for a week longer at
the publican’s without being interfered with. As
far as possible he observed the discipline of his House
and every night at the canonical hours would rise
from his palliasse to kneel on the bare boards and
recite the offices. Though both were reduced to a
diet of wretched scraps, he duly observed fasts and
abstinence. A smiling but pitiful spectator of these
austerities, Brotteaux one day asked him:

“Do you really believe that God finds any satis-
faction in seeing you endure cold and hunger as you
do?”

“God himself,” was the Monk’s answer, “has
given us the example of suffering.”

On the ninth day since the Barnabite had come
to share the philosopher’s garret, the latter sallied
forth at twilight to deliver his dancing-dolls to Joly,
the toy-merchant of the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-
Champs. He was on his way back overjoyed at
having sold them all, when, as he was crossing the
erstwhile Place du Carrousel, a girl in a blue satin
pelisse trimmed with ermine, running by with a
limping gait, threw herself into his arms and held
him fast in the way suppliants have had since the
world began.

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173

She was trembling and her heart was beating so
fast and loud it could be plainly heard* Wondering
to see one of her common sort look so pathetic,
Brotteaux, a veteran amateur of the stage, thought
how Mademoiselle Raucourt, if she could have seen
her, might have learnt something from her
bearing.

She spoke in breathless tones, lowering her voice
to a whisper for fear of being overheard by the
passers-by:

“Take me with you, citoyen , and hide me, for the
love of pity! . . . They are in my room in the Rue
Fromenteau. While they were coming upstairs, I
ran for refuge into Flora’s room, — she is my next-
door neighbour, — and leapt out of the window into
the street, that is how I sprained my ankle. • . .
They are coming; they want to put me in prison
and kill me. . . . Last week they killed Virginie.”

Brotteaux understood, of course, that the child
was speaking of the delegates of the Revolutionary
Committee of the Section or else the Commissaries
of the Committee of General Security. At that time
the Commune had as procureur a man of virtue, the
citoyen Chaumette who regarded the ladies of pleas-
ure as the direct foes of the Republic and harassed
them unmercifully in his efforts to regenerate the
Nation’s morals. To tell the truth, the young ladies
of the Palais-Egalite were no great patriots. They
regretted the old state of things and did not always
conceal the fact. Several had been guillotined al-
ready as conspirators, and their tragic fate had ex-
cited no little emulation among their fellows.

The citoyen Brotteaux asked the suppliant what
offence she had been guilty of to bring down on her-
self a warrant of arrest.

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

She swore she had no notion, that she had done
nothing anyone could blame her for.

“Well then, my girl,” Brotteaux told her, “you
are not suspect; you have nothing to fear. Be off
with you to bed and leave me alone.”

At this she confessed everything:

“I tore out my cockade and shouted: ‘Vive le
roi!”’

He walked down to the river-side and she kept
by his side along the deserted quais. Clinging to
his arm she went on:

“It is not that I care for him particularly, the
King, you know; I never knew him, and I daresay
he wasn’t very much different from other men. But
they are bad people. They are cruel to poor girls.
They torment and vex and abuse me in every kind
of way; they want to stop me following my trade.
I have no other trade. You may be sure, if I had,
I should not be doing what I do. . . . What is it
they want? They are so hard on poor humble folks,
the milkman, the charcoalman, the water carrier,
the laundress. They won’t rest content till they’ve
set all poor people against them.”

He looked at her; she seemed a mere child. She
was no longer afraid; she was almost smiling, as
she limped along lightly at his side. He asked her
her name. She said she was called Athenais and
was sixteen.

Brotteaux offered to see her safe to anywhere she
wished to go. She did not know a soul in Paris; but
she had an aunt, in service at Palaiseau, who would
take her in.

Brotteaux made up his mind at once.

“Come with me, my child,” he ordered, and led
the way home, with her hanging on his arm.

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175

On his arrival, he found the Pere Longuemare in
the garret reading his breviary.

Holding Athenai's by the hand, he drew the other’s
attention to her:

“Father,” he said, “here is a girl from the Rue
Fromenteau who has been shouting: ‘Vive le roiP
The revolutionary police are on her track. She has
nowhere to lay head. Will you allow the girl to
pass the night here?”

The Pere Longuemare closed his breviary.

“If I understand you right,” he said, “you ask
me, sir, if this young girl, who is like myself subject
to be molested under a warrant of arrest, may be
suffered, for her temporal salvation, to spend the
night in the same room as I?”

“Yes, Father.”

“By what right should I object? and why must
I suppose myself affronted by her presence? am I
so sure that I am any better than she?”

He established himself for the night in an old
broken-down armchair, declaring he should sleep
excellently in it. Athenai's lay on the mattress.
Brotteaux stretched himself on the palliasse and
blew out the candle.

The hours and half-hours sounded one after the
other from the church towers, but the old man could
not sleep; he lay awake listening to the mingled
breathing of the man of religion and the girl of
pleasure. The moon rose, symbol and witness of
his old-time loves, and threw a silvery ray into the
attic, illuminating the fair hair and golden lashes,
the delicate nose and round, red mouth of Athenai's,
who lay sound asleep,

“Truly,” he thought to himself, “a terrible enemy
for the Republic!”

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

When Athena'is awoke, the day was breaking.
The Monk had disappeared. Brotteaux was reading
Lucretius under the skylight, learning from the
maxims of the Latin poet to live without fears and
without desires; but for all this he felt himself at
the moment devoured with regrets and disquietudes.

Opening her eyes, Athena’is was dumfounded to
see the roof beams of a garret above her head. Then
she remembered, smiled at her preserver and ex-
tended towards him with a caressing gesture her
pretty little dirty hands.

Rising on her elbow, she pointed to the dilapidated
armchair in which the Monk had passed the night.

“He is not there? ... He has not gone to de-
nounce me, has he?”

“No, no, my child. You could not find a more
honest soul than that old madman.”

Athenais asked in what the old fellow’s madness
consisted; and when Brotteaux informed her it was
religion, she gravely reproached him for speaking
so, declaring that men without faith were worse
than the beasts that perish and that for her part
she often prayed to God, hoping He would forgive
her her sins and receive her in His blessed mercy.

Then, noticing that Brotteaux held a book in his
hand, she thought it was a book of the Mass and
said:

“There you see, you too, you say your prayers!
God will reward you for what you have done for
me.”

Brotteaux having told her that it was not a Mass-
book, and that it had been written before ever the
Mass had been invented in the world, she opined
it was an Interpretation of Dreams , and asked if it
did not contain an explanation of an extraordinary

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

177

dream she had had. She could not read and these
were the only two sorts of books she had heard
tell of.

Brotteaux informed her that this book was only
by way of explaining the dream of life. Finding this
a hard saying, the pretty child did not try to under-
stand it and dipped the end of her nose in the earth-
enware crock that replaced the silver basins Brot-
teaux had once been accustomed to use. Next, she
arranged her hair before her host’s shaving-glass
with scrupulous care and gravity. Her white arms
raised above her head, she let fall an observation
from time to time with long intervals between:

“You, you were rich once.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t know. But you were rich,— and you are
an aristocrat, I am certain of it.”

She drew from her pocket a little Holy Virgin of
silver in a round ivory shrine, a bit of sugar, thread,
scissors, a flint and steel, two or three cases for
needles and the like, and after selecting what she
required, sat down to mend her skirt, which had
got torn in several places.

“For your own safety, my child, put this in your
cap!” Brotteaux bade her, handing her a tricolour
cockade.

“I will do that gladly, sir,” she agreed, “but it
will be for the love of you and not for love of the
Nation.”

When she was dressed and had made herself look
her best, taking her skirt in both hands, she dropped
a curtsey as she had been taught to do in her village,
and addressing Brotteaux:

“Sir,” she said, “I am your very humble servant.”

She was prepared to oblige her benefactor in all
12

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

ways he might wish, but she thought it more be-
coming that he asked for no favour and she offered
none; it seemed to her a pretty way to part so, and
what good manners required.

Brotteaux slipped a few assignats into her hand
to pay her coach-hire to Palaiseau. It was the half
of his fortune, and, albeit he was notorious for his
lavishness towards women, it was the first time he
had ever made so equal a partition of his goods with
any of the sex.

She asked him his name.

“I am called Maurice.”

It was with reluctance he opened the garret door
for her:

“Good-bye, Athenais.”

She kissed him. “Monsieur Maurice,” she said,
“when you think of me, if ever you do, call me
Marthe; that is the name I was christened, the
n/me they called me by in the village. . . . Good-
bye and thank you. . . . Your very humble ser-
vant, Monsieur Maurice.”

XV

HE prisons were full to bursting and
must be emptied; the work of judg-
ing, judging, must go on without
truce or respite. Seated against the
tapestried walls with their fasces and
red caps of liberty, like their fellows
of the fleurs-de-lis, the judges pre-
served the same gravity, the same dreadful calm,
as their Royal predecessors. The Public Prosecutor
and his Deputies, worn out with fatigue, consumed
with the fever of sleeplessness and brandy, could
only shake off their exhaustion by a violent effort;
their broken health made them tragic figures to
look upon. The jurors, divers in character and
origin, some educated, others ignorant, craven or
generous, gentle or violent, hypocritical or sincere,
but all men who, knowing the fatherland and the
Republic in danger, suffered or feigned to suffer the
same anguish, to burn with the same ardour; all
alike primed to atrocities of virtue or of fear, they
formed but one living entity, one single head, dull
and irritable, one single soul, a beast of the apoca-
lypse that by the mere exercise of its natural func-
tions produced a teeming brood of death. Kind-
hearted or cruel by caprice of sensibility, when shaken
momentarily by a sudden pang of pity, they would
acquit with streaming eyes a prisoner whom an hour
before they would have condemned to the guillotine
with taunts. The further they proceeded with their

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

task, the more impetuously did they follow the im-
pulses of their heart.

Judge and jury toiled, fevered and half asleep
with overwork, distracted by the excitement out-
side and the orders of the sovereign people, menaced
by the threats of the sansculottes and tricoteuses who
crowded the galleries and the public enclosure, rely-
ing on insane evidence, acting on the denunciations
of madmen, in a poisonous atmosphere that stupe-
fied the brain, set ears hammering and temples beat-
ing and darkened the eyes with a veil of blood.
Vague rumours were current among the public of
jurors bought by the gold of the accused. But to
these the jury as a body replied with indignant pro-
test and merciless condemnations. In truth they
were men neither worse nor better than their fel-
lows. Innocence more often than not is a piece of
good fortune rather than a virtue; any other who
should have consented to put himself in their place
would have acted as they did and accomplished to the
best of his commonplace soul these appalling tasks.

Antoinette, so long expected, sat at last in the
fatal chair, in a black gown, the centre of such a
concentration of hate that only the certainty of what
the sentence would be made the court observe the
forms of law. To the deadly questions the accused
replied sometimes with the instinct of self-preserva-
tion, sometimes with her wonted haughtiness, and
once, thanks to the hideous suggestion of one of her
accusers, with the noble dignity of a mother. The
witnesses were confined to outrage and calumny;
the defence was frozen with terror. The tribunal,
forcing itself to respect the rules of procedure, was
only waiting till all formalities were completed to
hurl the head of the Austrian in the face of Europe.

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181

Three days after the execution of Marie Antoinette
Gamelin was called to the bedside of the citoyen
Fortune Trubert, who lay dying, within thirty paces
of the Military Bureau where he had worn out his
life, on a pallet of sacking, in the cell of some ex-
pelled Barnabite father. His livid face was sunk in
the pillow. His eyes, which already were almost
sightless, turned their glassy pupils upon his visitor;
his parched hand grasped Evariste’s and pressed it
with unexpected vigour. Three times he had
vomited blood in two days. He tried to speak; his
voice, at first hoarse and feeble as a whisper, grew
louder, deeper:

“Wattignies! Wattignies! . . . Jourdan has forced
the enemy into their camp . . . raised the blockade
at Maubeuge. . . . We have retaken Marchiennes,
qa ira . . . qa ira . . and he smiled.

These were no dreams of a sick man, but a clear
vision of the truth that flashed through the brain
so soon to be shrouded in eternal darkness. Here-
after the invasion seemed arrested; the Generals
were terrorized and saw that the one best thing for
them to do was to be victorious. Where voluntary
recruiting had failed to produce what was needed, a
strong and disciplined army, compulsion was suc-
ceeding. One effort more, and the Republic would
be saved.

After a half hour of semi-consciousness. Fortune
Trubert’s face, hollow-cheeked and worn by disease,
lit up again and his hands moved.

He lifted his finger and pointed to the only piece
of furniture in the room, a little walnut-wood writ-
ing-desk. The voice was weak and breathless, but
the mind quite unclouded:

“Like Eudamidas,” he said, “I bequeath my debts

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

to my friend, — three hundred and twenty livres, of
which you will find the account ... in that red
book yonder . . . good-bye, Gamelin. Never rest;
wake and watch over the defence of the Republic.
(Ja ira.”

The shades of night were deepening in the cell.
The difficult breathing of the dying man was the
only sound, and his hands scratching on the
sheet.

At midnight he uttered some disconnected
phrases:

“More saltpetre. . . . See the muskets are de-
livered. Health? Oh! excellent. . . . Get down
the church-bells. . . .”

He breathed his last at five in the morning.

By order of the Section his body lay in state in
the nave of the erstwhile church of the Barnabites,
at the foot of the Altar of the Fatherland, on a
camp bed, covered with a tricolour flag and the
brow wreathed with an oak crown.

Twelve old men clad in the Roman toga, with
palms in their hands, twelve young girls wearing
long veils and carrying flowers, surrounded the
funeral couch. At the dead man’s feet stood two
children, each holding an inverted torch. One of
them Evariste recognized as his concierge's little
daughter Josephine, who in her childish gravity and
beauty reminded him of those charming genii of
Love and Death the Romans used to sculpture on
their tombs.

The funeral procession made its way to the Ceme-
tery of Saint-Andre-des-Arts to the strains of the
Marseillaise and the Qa-ira.

As he laid the kiss of farewell on Fortune Trubert’s
brow, Evariste wept. His tears flowed in self-pity,

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183

for he envied his friend who was resting there, his
task accomplished.

On reaching home, he received notice that he was
posted a member of the Council General of the Com-
mune. After standing as candidate for four months,
he had been elected unopposed, after several bal-
lots, by some thirty suffrages. No one voted nowa-
days; the Sections were deserted; rich and poor
alike only sought to shirk the performance of public
duties. The most momentous events had ceased to
rouse either enthusiasm or curiosity; the newspapers
were left unread. Out of the seven hundred thou-
sand inhabitants of the capital Evariste doubted if
as many as three or four thousand still preserved
the old Republican spirit.

The same day the Twenty-one came up for trial.
Innocent or guilty of the calamities and crimes of
the Republic, vain, incautious, ambitious and im-
petuous, at once moderate and violent, feeble in
their fear as in their clemency, quick to declare war,
slow to carry it out, haled before the Tribunal to
answer for the example they had given, they were
not the less the first and the most brilliant children
of the Revolution, whose delight and glory they
had been. The judge who will question them with
artful bias; the pallid accuser yonder who, where
he sits behind his little table, is planning their death
and dishonour; the jurors who will presently try to
stifle their defence; the public in the galleries which
overwhelms them with howls of insult and abuse, —
all, judge, jury, people, have applauded their elo-
quence in other days, extolled their talents and their
virtues. But judge, jury, people have short mem-
ories now.

Once Evariste had made Vergniaud his god, Brissot

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his oracle. But he had forgotten; if any vestige of
his old wonder still lingered in his memory, it was
to think that these monsters had seduced the noblest
citizens.

Returning to his lodging after the sitting, Gamelin
heard heart-breaking cries as he entered the house.
It was little Josephine; her mother was whipping
her for playing in the Place with good-for-nothing
boys and dirtying the fine white frock she had worn
for the obsequies of the citoyen Trubert.

XVI

FTER three months during which he
had made a daily holocaust of vic-
tims, illustrious or insignificant, to
the fatherland, Evariste had a case
that interested him personally; there
was one prisoner he made it his special
business to track down to death.

Ever since he had sat on the juror’s bench, he had
been eagerly watching, among the crowd of cul-
prits who appeared before him, for Elodie’s seducer;
of this man he had elaborated in his busy fancy a
portrait, some details of which were accurate. He
pictured him as young, handsome, haughty, and
felt convinced he had fled to England. He thought
he had discovered him in a young emigre named
Maubel, who, having come back to France and been
denounced by his host, had been arrested in an inn
at Passy; Fouquier-Tinville was in charge of the
prosecution, — among a thousand others. Letters
had been found on him which the accusation re-
garded as proofs of a plot concocted between Maubel
and the agents of Pitt, but which were in fact only
letters written to the emigre by a banking-house in
London which he had entrusted with certain funds.
Maubel, who was young and good-looking, seemed
to be mainly occupied in affairs of gallantry. His
pocket-book afforded a clue to some correspondence
with Spain, then at war with France; but these

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186 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

communications were really of a purely private na-
ture, and if the court of preliminary enquiry did not
ignore the bill, it was only in virtue of the maxim
that justice should never be in too great a hurry to
release a prisoner.

Gamelin was handed a report of Maubel’s first
semi-private examination and he was struck by what
it revealed of the young man’s character, which he
took to agree with what he believed to be that of
Elodie’s betrayer. Thereafter he spent long hours
in the private room of the Clerk of the Court, poring
eagerly over the papers relating to this case. His
suspicion received a remarkable confirmation on his
discovering in a note-book belonging to the emigre ,
but long out of date, the address of the Amour pein-
tre , in company, it is true, with those of the Green
Monkey , the Dauphin s Head , and several more
print and picture shops. But when he was informed
that in this same note-book had been found three
or four petals of a red carnation carefully wrapped
in a piece of silk paper, remembering how the red
carnation was Elodie’s favourite flower, the one she
cultivated on her window-sill, wore in her hair and
used to give (he had reason to know) as a love-
token, Evariste’s last doubts vanished. Being now
convinced he knew the facts, he resolved to ques-
tion Elodie, though without letting her know the
circumstances that had led him to discover the
culprit.

As he was climbing the stairs to his lodgings, he
perceived even on the lower landings a stifling smell
of fruit, and on reaching the studio, found Elodie
helping the citoyenne Gamelin to make quince pre-
serve. While the old housewife was kindling the
stove and turning over in her mind ways of saving

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187

the fuel and moist sugar without prejudicing the
quality of the preserves, the citoyenne Blaise, seated
in a straw-bottomed chair, with an apron of brown
holland and her lap full of the golden fruit, was
peeling the quinces, quartering and throwing them
into a shallow copper basin. The strings of her coif
were thrown back over her shoulders, the meshes of
her black hair coiled above her moist forehead; from
her whole person breathed a domestic charm and
an intimate grace that induced gentle thoughts and
voluptuous dreams of tranquil pleasures.

Without stirring from her seat, she lifted her
beautiful eyes, that gleamed like molten gold, to her
lover’s face, and said:

“See, Evariste, we are working for you. We mean
you to have a store of delicious quince jelly to last
you the winter; it will settle your stomach and make
your heart merry.”

But Gamelin, stepping nearer, uttered a name in
her ear:

“Jacques Maubel . . .”

At that moment Combalot the cobbler showed
his red nose at the half-open door. He had brought,
along with some pairs of shoes he had re-heeled, the
bill for the repairs.

For fear of being taken for a bad citizen, he made
a point of using the new calendar. The citoyenne
Gamelin, who liked to see clearly what was what in
her accounts, was all astray among the Fructidors
and Vendemiaires. She heaved a sigh.

“Jesus!” she complained, “they want to alter
everything, — days, months, seasons of the year, the
sun and the moon! Lord God, Monsieur Combalot,
what ever is this pair of over-shoes down for the 8
Vendemiaire?”

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

“Citoyenne, just cast your eye over your almanac,
and you’ll get the hang of it.”

She took it down from the wall, glanced at it and
immediately turning her head another way;

“It hasn’t a Christian look!” she cried in a
shocked tone.

“Not only that, citoyenne ,” said the cobbler, “but
now we have only three Sundays in the month
instead of four. And that’s not all; we shall soon
have to change our ways of reckoning. There will be
no more farthings and half-farthings, everything will
be regulated by distilled water.”

At the words the citoyenne Gamelin, whose lips
were trembling, threw up her eyes to the ceiling and
sighed out:

“They are going too far!”

And, while she was lost in lamentations, looking
like the holy women in a wayside calvary, a bad coal
that had caught alight in the fire when her attention
was diverted, began to fill the studio with a poison-
ous smother which, added to the stifling smell of
quinces, was like to make the air unbreathable.

Elodie complained that her throat was tickling
her and begged to have the window opened. But,
directly the citoyen Combalot had taken his leave
and the citoyenne Gamelin had gone back to her
stove, Evariste repeated the same name in the girl’s
ear:

“Jacques Maubel,” he reiterated.

She looked up at him in some surprise, and very
quietly, still going on cutting a quince in quarters:

“Well! . . . Jacques Maubel . .

“He is the man.”

“The man! what man?”

“You once gave him a red carnation.”

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189

She declared she did not understand and asked
him to explain himself.

“That aristocrat! that emigre! that scoundrel !”

She shrugged her shoulders, and denied with the
most natural air that she had never known a
Jacques Maubel.

It was true; she had never known anyone of the
name.

She denied she had ever given red carnations to
anybody but Evariste; but perhaps, on this point,
her memory was not very good.

He had little experience of women and was far
from having fully fathomed Elodie’s character; still,
he deemed her quite capable of cajoling and deceiv-
ing a cleverer man than himself.

“Why deny?” he asked. “I know all.”

Again she asseverated she had never known any-
body called Maubel. And, having done peeling the
quinces, she asked for a basin of water, because her
fingers were sticky. This Gamelin brought her, and,
as she washed her hands, she repeated her denials.

Again he repeated that he knew, and this time she
made no reply.

She did not guess the object of her lover’s ques-
tion and she was a thousand miles from suspecting
that this Maubel, whom she had never heard spoken
of before, was to appear before the Revolutionary
Tribunal; she could make nothing of the suspicions
with which she was assailed, but she knew them to
be unfounded. For this reason, having very little
hope of dissipating them, she had very little wish to
do so either. She ceased to deny having known
Maubel, preferring to leave her jealous lover to go
astray on a false trail, when from one moment to
the next, the smallest incident might start him on

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

the right road. Her little lawyer's clerk of former
days, now grown into a patriot dragoon and lady-
killer, had quarrelled by now with his aristocratic
mistress. Whenever he met Elodie in the street, he
would gaze at her with a glance that seemed to
say:

“Come, my beauty! I feel sure I am going to for-
give you for having betrayed you, and I am really
quite ready to take you back into favour." She
made no further attempt therefore to cure what she
called her lover's crotchets, and Gamelin remained
firm in the conviction that Jacques Maubel was
Elodie's seducer.

Through the days that ensued the Tribunal de-
voted its undivided attention to the task of crush-
ing Federalism, which, like a hydra, had threatened
to devour Liberty. They were busy days; and the
jurors, worn out with fatigue, despatched with the
utmost possible expedition the case of the woman
Roland, instigator and accomplice of the crimes of
the Brissotin faction.

Meantime Gamelin spent every morning at the
Courts to press on Maubel’s trial. Some important
pieces of evidence were to be found at Bordeaux; he
insisted on a Commissioner being sent to ride post
to fetch them. They arrived at last. The deputy
of the Public Prosecutor read them, pulled a face
and told Evariste:

“It is not good for much, your new evidence!
there is nothing in it! mere fiddle-faddle. ... If
only it was certain that this ci-devant Comte de
Maubel ever really emigrated . . .”!

In the end Gamelin succeeded. Young Maubel
was served with his act of accusation and brought

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 191

before the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 19
Brumaire.

From the first opening of the sitting the President
showed the gloomy and dreadful face he took care
to assume for the hearing of cases where the evidence
was weak. The Deputy Prosecutor stroked his chin
with the feather of his pen and affected the serenity
of a conscience at ease. The Clerk read the act of
accusation; it was the hollowest sham the Court
had ever heard so far.

The President asked the accused if he had not
been aware of the laws passed against the
emigres.

“I was aware of them and I observed them,”
answered Maubel, “and I left France provided with
passports in proper form.”

As to the reasons for his journey to England and
his return to France he had satisfactory explanations
to offer. His face was pleasant, with a look of frank-
ness and confidence that was agreeable. The women
in the galleries looked at the young man with a
favourable eye. The prosecution maintained that
he had made a stay in Spain at the time that Nation
was at war with France; he averred he had never
left Bayonne at that period. One point alone re-
mained obscure. Among the papers he had thrown
in the fire at the time of his arrest, and of which only
fragments had been found, some words in Spanish
had been deciphered and the name of “Nieves.”

On this subject Jacques Maubel refused to give
the explanations demanded; and, when the Presi-
dent told him that it was in the accused’s own in j
terest to clear up the point, he answered that a man
ought not always to do what his own interest
requires.

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

Gamelin only thought of convicting Maubel of a
crime; three times over he pressed the President to
ask the accused if he could explain about the car-
nation the dried petals of which he hoarded so care-
fully in his pocket-book.

Maubel replied that he did not consider himself
obliged to answer a question that had no concern
with the case at law, as no letter had been found
concealed in the flower.

The jury retired to the hall of deliberations,
favourably impressed towards the young man whose
mysterious conduct appeared chiefly connected with
a lover’s secrets. This time the good patriots, the
purest of the pure themselves, would gladly have
voted for acquittal. One of them, a ci-devant noble,
who had given pledges to the Revolution, said:

“Is it his birth they bring up against him? I,
too, I have had the misfortune to be born in the
aristocracy.”

“Yes, but you have left them,” retorted Gamelin,
“and he has not.”

And he spoke with such vehemence against this
conspirator, this emissary of Pitt, this accomplice
of Coburg, who had climbed the mountains and
sailed the seas to stir up enemies to Liberty, he de-
manded the traitor’s condemnation in such burning
words, that he awoke the never-resting suspicions,
the old stern temper of the patriot jury.

One of them told him cynically:

“There are services that cannot well be refused
between colleagues.”

The verdict of death was recorded by a majority
of one.

The condemned man heard his sentence with a
quiet smile. His eyes, which had been gazing un-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

193

concernedly about the hall, as they fell on Gamelin’s
face, took on an expression of unspeakable contempt.

No one applauded the decision of the court.

Jacques Maubel was taken back to the Con-
ciergerie; here he wrote a letter while he waited the
hour of execution, which was to take place the same
evening, by torchlight:

My dear sister , — The tribunal sends me to the scaffold , affording
me the only joy I have been able to appreciate since the death of my
adored Nieves. They have taken from me the only relic I had left of
her, a pomegranate flower , which they called , I cannot tell why, a
carnation.

I loved the arts; at Paris, in happier times, I made a collection of
paintings and engravings, which are now in a sure place, and which
will be delivered to you so soon as this is possible. I pray you, dear
sister, to keep them in memory of me.

He cut a lock of his hair, enclosed it in the letter,
which he folded and wrote outside:

To the citoyenne Clemence Dezeimeries, n&e Maubel,

La Reole .

He gave all the silver he had on him to the turn-
key, begging him to forward this letter to its des-
tination, asked for a bottle of wine, which he drank in
little sips while waiting for the cart. . . .

After supper Gamelin ran to the Amour Peintre
and burst into the blue chamber where every night
fdodie was waiting for him.

“You are avenged,” he told her. “Jacques
Maubel is no more. The cart that took him to
his death has just passed beneath your window
escorted by torch-bearers.”

She understood :

“Wretch! it is you have killed him, and he was

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194 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

not my lover. I did not know him. ... I have
never seen him . . . What was this man? He was
young, amiable . . . innocent. And you have killed
him, wretch! wretch !”

She fell in a faint. But, amid the shadows of this
momentary death, she felt herself overborne by a
flood at once of horror and voluptuous ecstasy. She
half revived; her heavy lids lifted to show the whites
of the eyes, her bosom swelled, her hands beat the
air, seeking for her lover. She pressed him to her
in a strangling embrace, drove her nails into the flesh,
and gave him with her bleeding lips, without a word,
without a sound, the longest, the most agonized, the
most delicious of kisses.

She loved him with all her flesh, and the more
terrible, cruel, atrocious she thought him, the more
she saw him reeking with the blood of his victims,
the more consuming was her hunger and thirst for
him.

XVII

HE 24 Frimaire, at ten in the fore-
noon, under a clear bright sun that
was melting the ice formed in the
night, the citoyens Guenot and De-
lourmel, delegates of the Committee
of General Security, proceeded to the
Barnabites and asked to be con-
ducted to the Committee of Surveillance of the
Section, in the Capitular hall, whose only occupant
for the moment was the citoyen Beauvisage, who
was piling logs on the fire. But they did not see
him just at first because of his short, thickset
stature.

In a hunchback’s cracked voice the citoyen Beau-
visage begged the delegates to seat themselves and
put himself entirely at their service.

Guenot then asked him if he knew a ci-devant
Monsieur des Ilettes, residing near the Pont-Neuf.

“It is an individual,” he added, “whose arrest I
am instructed to effect,” — and he exhibited the
order from the Committee of General Security.

Beauvisage, after racking his memory for a while,
replied that he knew no individual of that name,
that the suspect in question might not be an inhabi-
tant of his Section, certain portions of the Sections
du Museum , de /’ Unite, de Marat-et-Marseille being
likewise in the near neighbourhood of the Pont-
Neuf; that, if he did live in the Section, it must be
under another name than that borne on the Corn-

195

196

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

mittee’s order; that, nevertheless, it would not be
long before they laid hands on him.

“ Let’s lose no time,” urged Guenot. “Our vigi-
lance was aroused in this case by a letter from one
of the man’s accomplices that was intercepted and
put into the hands of the Committee a fortnight
ago, but which the citoyen Lacroix took action upon
only yesterday evening. We are overdone with
business; denunciations flow in from every quarter
in such abundance one does not know which to
attend to.”

“ Denunciations,” replied Beauvisage proudly,
“are coming in freely, too, to the Committee of
Vigilance of our Section. Some make these revela-
tions out of patriotism, others lured by the bait of a
bank-bill for a hundred sols . Many children de-
nounce their parents, whose property they covet.”

“This letter,” resumed Guenot, “emanates from
a ci-devant called Rochemaure, a woman of gal-
lantry, at whose house they played biribi , and is
addressed to one citoyen Rauline; but is really for
an emigre in the service of Pitt. I have brought it
with me to communicate to you the portion relat-
ing to this man des Ilettes.

He drew the letter from his pocket.

“It begins with copious details as to those mem-
bers of the Convention who might, according to the
woman’s tale, be gained over by the offer of a sum
of money or the promise of a well-paid post under a
new Government, more stable than the present.
Then comes the following passage:

“7 have just relumed from a visit to Monsieur des Ileltes, who
lives near the Pont-Neuf in a garret where you must be either a
cat or an imp to get at him; he is reduced to earning a living by
making punch-and-judics. He is a man of judgment, for which

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

197

reason I report to you , sir, the main gist of his conversation . He
does not believe that the existing state of things will last long. Nor
does he foresee its being ended by the victory of the coalition , and
events appear to justify his opinion; for, as you are aware, sir,
for some time past tidings from the front have been bad. He
would rather seem to believe in the revolt of the poor and the women
of the humbler classes, who remain still deeply attached to their
religion . He holds that the wide-spread alarm caused by the
Revolutionary Tribunal will soon reunite all France against the
Jacobins. *This tribunal ,’ he said, in his joking way, * which
sentences the Queen of France and a bread-hawker, is like that
William Shakespeare the English admire so much , etc. . .

He thinks it not impossible that Robespierre may marry Madame
Royale and have himself named Protector of the Kingdom.

il I should be grateful to you, sir, if you would transmit me
the amount owing to me, that is to say one thousand pounds star -
ling, by the channel you are in the habit of using; but whatever
you do, do not write to Monsieur Morhardt ; he has lately been
arrested , thrown into prison , etc., etc. . . .”

“This worthy des Ilettes makes dancing-dolls, it
appears,” observed Beauvisage, “that is a valuable
clue . . . though certainly there are many petty
trades of the sort carried on in the Section.”

“That reminds me,” said Delourmel, “I promised
to bring home a doll for my little girl Nathalie, my
youngest, who is ill with scarlatina. The fever is
not a dangerous one, but it demands careful nurs-
ing, and Nathalie, a very forward child for her
age, and with a very active brain, has but delicate
health.”

“I,” remarked Guenot, “I have only a boy. He
plays hoop with barrel-hoops and makes little mont-
golfier balloons by inflating paper bags.”

“Very often,” Beauvisage put in his word, “it is
with articles that are not toys at all that children
like best to play. My nephew £mile, a little chap
of seven, a very intelligent child, amuses himself all

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

day long with little wooden bricks with which he
builds houses. ... Do you snuff, citoyens?” — and
Beauvisage held out his open snuff-box to the two
delegates.

“Now we must set about nabbing our rascal,”
said Delourmel, who had long moustaches and great
eyes that rolled in his head. “I feel quite in the mood
this morning for a dish of aristocrat’s lights and
liver, washed down with a glass of white wine.”

Beauvisage suggested to the delegates going to
the Place Dauphine to see if his colleague Dupont
senior was at his shop there; he would be sure to
know this man, des Ilettes.

So they set off in the keen morning air, accom-
panied by four grenadiers of the Section.

“Have you seen ‘ The Last Judgment of Kings 9
played?” Delourmel asked his companions; “the
piece is worth seeing. The author shows you all the
Kings of Europe on a desert island where they have
taken refuge, at the foot of a volcano which swal-
lows them up. It is a patriotic work.”

At the corner of the Rue du Harlay Delourmel’s
eye was caught by a little cart, as brilliantly painted
as a reliquary, which an old woman was pushing,
wearing over her coif a hat of waxed cloth.

“What is that old woman selling?” he asked.

The old dame answered for herself:

“Look, gentlemen, make your choice. I have
beads and rosaries, crosses, St. Anthonys, holy
cerecloths, St. Veronica handkerchiefs, Ecce homos ,
Agnus Deis , hunting-horns and rings of St. Hubert,
and articles of devotion of every sort and
kind.”

“Why, it is the very arsenal of fanaticism!” cried
Delourmel in horror, — and he proceeded to a sum-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 199

mary examination of the poor woman, who made
the same answer to every question:

“My son, it's forty years I have been selling arti-
cles of devotion.”

Another Delegate of the Committee of General
Security, noticing a blue-coated National Guard
passing, directed him to convey the astonished old
woman to the Conciergerie.

The citoyen Beauvisage pointed out to Delourmel
that it would have been more in the competence of
the Committee of Surveillance to arrest the woman
and bring her before the Section; that in any case,
one never knew nowadays what attitude to take
up towards the old religion so as to act up to the
views of the Government, and whether it was best
to allow everything or forbid everything.

On nearing the joiner’s shop, the delegates and
the commissary could hear angry shouts mingling
with the hissing of the saw and the grinding of the
plane. A quarrel had broken out between the joiner,
Dupont senior, and his neighbour Remade, the
porter, because of the citoyenne Remade, whom an
irresistible attraction was for ever drawing into the
recesses of the workshop, whence she would return
to the porter’s lodge ail covered with shavings and
saw-dust. The injured porter bestowed a kick on
Mouton, the carpenter’s dog, which at that very
moment his own little daughter Josephine was nurs-
ing lovingly in her arms. Josephine was furious and
burst into a torrent of imprecations against her
father, while the carpenter shouted in a voice of
exasperation:

“Wretch! I tell you you shall not beat my dog.”

“And I,” retorted the porter brandishing his
broom, “I tell you you shall not . .

200 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

He did not finish the sentence; the joiner’s plane
had hurtled close past his head.

The instant he caught sight of the citoyen Beau-
visage and the attendant delegates, he rushed up to
him and cried:

“Citoyen Commissary you are my witness, this
villain has just tried to murder me/’

The citoyen Beauvisage, in his red cap, the badge
of his office, put out his long arms in the attitude of
a peacemaker, and addressing the porter and the
joiner:

“A hundred sols” he announced, “to whichever
of you will inform us where to find a suspect, wanted
by the Committee of General Security, a ci-devant
named des Ilettes, a maker of dancing-dolls.”

With one accord porter and carpenter designated
Brotteaux’s lodging, the only quarrel now between
them being who should have the assignat for a hun-
dred sols promised the informer.

Delourmel, Guenot, and Beauvisage, followed by
the four grenadiers, Remade the porter, Dupont
the carpenter, and a dozen little scamps of the
neighbourhood filed up the stairs which shook under
their tread, and finally mounted the ladder to the
attics.

Brotteaux was in his garret busy cutting out his
dancing figures, while the Pere Longuemare sat fa-
cing him, stringing their scattered limbs on threads,
smiling to himself to see rhythm and harmony thus
growing under his fingers.

At the sound of muskets being grounded on the
landing, the monk trembled in every limb, not that
he was a whit less courageous than Brotteaux, who
never moved a muscle, but the habit of respect for
human conventions had never disciplined him to

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

201

assume an attitude of self-composure. Brotteaux
gathered from the citoyen Delourmel’s questions the
quarter from which the blow had come and saw too
late how unwise it is to confide in women. He
obeyed the citoyen Commissary’s order to go with
him, first picking up his Lucretius and his three shirts.

“The citoyen” he said, “pointing to the Pere
Longuemare, “is an assistant I have taken to help
me make my marionettes. His home is here.”

But the monk failing to produce a certificate of
citizenship, was put under arrest along with Brot-
teaux.

As the procession filed past the porter’s door, the
citoyenne Remade, leaning on her broom, looked at
her lodger with the eyes of virtue beholding crime
in the clutches of the law. Little Josephine, dainty
and disdainful, held back Mouton by his collar when
the dog tried to fawn on the friend who had often
given him a lump of sugar. A gaping crowd filled
the Place de Thionville.

At the foot of the stairs Brotteaux came face to
face with a young peasant woman who was on the
point of going up. She carried a basket on her arm
full of eggs and in her hand a flat cake wrapped in a
napkin. It was Athenais, who had come from Palai-
seau to present her saviour with a token of her grati-
tude. When she observed a posse of magistrates
and four grenadiers and “Monsieur Maurice”
being led away a prisoner, she stopped in con-
sternation and asked if it was really true; then
she stepped up to the Commissary and said in a
gentle voice:

“You are not taking him to prison? it can’t be
possible. . . . Why! you don’t know him! God
himself is not better or kinder.”

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

The citoyen Delourmel pushed her away and
beckoned to the grenadiers to come forward. Then
Athenais let loose a torrent of the foulest abuse, the
filthiest and most abominable invective, at the
magistrates and soldiers, who thought that all the
rinsings of the Palais-Royal and the Rue Fromen-
teau were being emptied over their devoted heads.
After which, in a voice that filled the whole Place
de Thionville and sent a shudder through the throng
of curious onlookers:

“Vive le roi! Vive le roi!” she yelled.

XVIII

HE citoyenne Gamelin was devoted to
old Brotteaux, and taking him alto-
gether, thought him the best and
greatest man she had ever known.
She had not bidden him good-bye
when he was arrested, because she
would not have dared to defy the
powers that be and because in her lowly estate she
looked upon cowardice as a duty. But she had
received a blow she could not recover from.

She could not eat and lamented she had lost her
appetite just when she had at last the means to
satisfy it. She still admired her son; but she durst
not let her mind dwell on the appalling duties he
was engaged upon and congratulated herself she
was only an ignorant woman who had no call to
judge his conduct.

The poor mother had found a rosary at the bot-
tom of a trunk; she hardly knew how to use it, but
often fumbled the beads in her trembling fingers.
She had lived to grow old without any overt exer-
cise of her religion, but she had always been a pious
woman, and she would pray to God all day long, in
the chimney corner, to save her boy and that good,
kind Monsieur Brotteaux. Elodie often came to
see her; they durst not look each other in the eyes,
and sitting side by side they would talk at random
of indifferent matters.

One day in Pluviose, when the snow, falling in

203

204

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

heavy flakes, darkened the sky and deadened the
noises of the city, the citoyenne Gamelin, who was
alone in the lodging heard a knock at the door. She
started violently; for months now the slightest
noise had set her trembling. She opened the door.
A young man of eighteen or twenty walked in, his
hat on his head. He was dressed in a bottle-green
box-coat, the triple collar of which covered his bust
and descended to the waist. He wore top-boots of
an English cut. His chestnut hair fell in ringlets
about his shoulders. He stepped into the middle
of the studio, as if wishful that all the light admitted
by the snow-encumbered sky-light might fall on
him, and stood there some moments without mov-
ing or speaking.

At last, in answer to the citoyenne Gamelin’s look
of amazement:

“Don’t you know your daughter?”

The old dame clasped her hands:

“Julie! ... It is you. . . . Good God! is it
possible? . . .”

“Why, yes, it is I. Kiss me, mother.”

The citoyenne Gamelin pressed her daughter to
her bosom, and dropped a tear on the collar of the
box-coat. Then she began again in an anxious voice:

“You, in Paris! . . .”

“Ah! mother, but why did I not come alone!
For myself, they will never know me in this dress.”

It was a fact the box-coat sufficiently disguised
her shape, and she did not look very different from
a great many very young men, who, like her, wore
their hair long and parted in two masses on the fore-
head. Her features, which were delicately cut and
charming, but burnt by the sun, drawn with fatigue,
worn with anxiety, had a bold, masculine expression.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

205

She was slim, with long straight limbs and an easy
carriage; only the clear treble ot her voice could
have betrayed her sex.

Her mother asked her if she was hungry. She
said she would be glad of something to eat, and
when bread, wine and ham had been set before her,
she! fell to, one elbow on the table, with a pretty glut-
tony, like Ceres in the hut of the old woman
Baubo.

Then, the glass still at her lips:

“ Mother, ” she asked, “do you know when my
brother will be back? I have come to speak to
Inn**”

The good woman looked at her daughter in em-
barrassment and said nothing.

“I must see him. My husband was arrested this
morning and taken to the Luxembourg/'

By this name of “husband" she designated For-
tune de Chassagne, a ci-devant noble and officer in
Bouille's regiment. He had first loved her when
she was a work-girl at a milliner's in the Rue des
Lombards, and had carried her away with him to
England, whither he had fled after the ioth August.
He was her lover; but she thought it more becom-
ing to speak of him as her husband before her mother.
Indeed, she told herself that the hardships they had
shared had surely united them in a wedlock conse-
crated by suffering.

More than once they had spent the night side by
side on a bench in one of the London parks and
gathered up scraps of broken bread under the table
in the taverns in Piccadilly.

Her mother could find no answer and gazed at
her mournfully.

“Don’t you hear what I say, mother? Time

206 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

presses, I must see Evariste at once; he, and he
only, can save Fortune’s life.”

“ Julie,” answered her mother at last, “it is better
you should not speak to your brother.”

“Why, what do you mean, mother?”

“I mean what I say, it is better you do not
speak to your brother about Monsieur de Chas-
sagne.” -

“But, mother, I must!”

“My child, Evariste can never forgive Monsieur
de Chassagne for his treatment of you. You know
how angrily he used to speak of him, what names he
called him.”

“Yes, he called him seducer,” said Julie with a
little hissing laugh, shrugging her shoulders.

“My child, it was a mortal blow to his pride.
Evariste has vowed never again to mention Monsieur
de Chassagne’s name, and for two years now he has
not breathed one word of him or of you. But his
feelings have not altered; you know him, he can
never forgive you.”

“But, mother, as Fortune has married me . . .
in London. ...”

The poor mother threw up her eyes and hands:

“Fortune is an aristocrat, an emigre , and that is
cause enough to make Evariste treat him as an
enemy.”

“Mother, give me a direct answer. Do you mean
that if I ask him to go to the Public Prosecutor and
the Committee of General Security and take the
necessary steps to save Fortune’s life, do you mean
that he will not consent? . . . But, mother, he
would be a monster if he refused!”

“My child, your brother is an honest man and a
good son. But do not ask him, oh! do not ask him

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 207

to intercede for Monsieur de Chassagne. . . . Listen
to me, Julie. He does not confide his thoughts to
me and, no doubt, I should not be competent to
understand them . . . but he is a juror; he has
principles; he acts as his conscience dictates. Do
not ask him anything, Julie.”

“Ah! I see you know him now. You know that
he is cold, callous, that he is a bad man, that ambi-
tion and vainglory are his only guides. And you
always loved him better than me. When we lived
together, all three of us, you set him up as my pat-
tern to copy. His staid demeanour and grave speech
impressed you; you thought he possessed all the
virtues. And me, me you always blamed, you gave
me all the vices, because I was frank and free, and
because I climbed trees. You could never endure
me. You loved nobody but him. There, I hate
him, your model Evariste; he is a hypocrite.”

“Hush, Julie! I have been a good mother to you
as well as to him. I had you taught a trade. It
has been no fault of mine that you are not an hon-
est woman and did not marry in your station. I
loved you tenderly and I love you still. I forgive
you and I love you. But do not speak ill of Evariste.
He is a good son. He has always taken care of me.
When you left me, my child, when you abandoned
your trade and forsook your shop, to go and live
with Monsieur de Chassagne, what would have
become of me without him? I should have died of
hunger and wretchedness.”

“Do not talk so, mother; you know very well
we would have cherished you with all affection,
Fortune and I, if you had not turned your face from
us, at Evariste’s instigation. Never tell me! he is
incapable of a kindly action. It was to make me

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

odious in your eyes that he made a pretence of car-
ing for you. He! love you? ... Is he capable of
loving anyone? He has neither heart nor head.
He has no talent, not a scrap. To paint, a man
must have a softer, tenderer nature than his.”

She threw a glance round the canvases in the
studio, which she found to be no better and no worse
than when she left her home.

“There you see his soul! he has put it in his pic-
tures, cold and sombre as it is. His Orestes, his
Orestes with the dull eye and cruel mouth, and
looking as if he had been impaled, is himself all
over. . . . But, mother, cannot you understand at
all? I cannot leave Fortune in prison. You know
these Jacobins, these patriots, all Evariste’s crew.
They will kill him. Mother, little mother, darling
mother, I cannot have them kill him. I love him!
I love him! He has been so good to me, and we
have been so unhappy together. Look, this box-
coat is one of his coats. I had never a shift left.
A friend of Fortune’s lent me a jacket and I got a
post with an eating-house keeper at Dover, while
he worked at a barber’s. We knew quite well that
to return to France was to risk our lives; but we
were asked if we would go to Paris to carry out
an important mission. . . . We agreed, — we would
have accepted a mission to hell! Our travelling ex-
penses were paid and we were given a letter of ex-
change on a Paris banker. We found the offices
closed; the banker is in prison and going to be guil-
lotined. We had not a brass farthing. All the in-
dividuals with whom we were in correspondence and
to whom we could appeal are fled or imprisoned.
Not a door to knock at. We slept in a stable in
the Rue de la Femme-sans-tete. A charitable boot-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

209

black, who slept on the same straw with us there,
lent my lover one of his boxes, a brush and a pot of
blacking three quarters empty. For a fortnight
Fortune made his living and mine by blacking shoes
in the Place de Greve.

“But on Monday a Member of the Commune put
his foot on the box to have his boots polished. He
had been a butcher once, a man Fortune had before
now given a kick behind to for selling meat of short
weight. When Fortune raised his head to ask for
his two sous, the rascal recognized him, called him
aristocrat, and threatened to have him arrested.
A crowd collected, made up of honest folks and a few
blackguards, who began to shout “ Death to the
emigre /” and called for the gendarmes. At that
moment I came up with Fortune’s bowl of soup. I
saw him taken off to the Section and shut up in the
church of Saint-Jean. I tried to kiss him, but they
hustled me away. I spent the night like a dog on
the church steps. . . . They took him away this
morning. . «

Julie could not finish, her sobs choked her.

She threw her hat on the floor and fell on her
knees at her mother’s feet.

“They took him away this morning to the Luxem-
bourg prison. Mother, mother, help me to save
him; have pity on your child!”

Drowned in her tears, she threw open her box-
coat and, the better to prove herself a woman and a
wife, bared her bosom; seizing her mother’s hands,
she held them close over her throbbing breasts.

“My darling, my daughter, Julie, my Julie!”
sobbed the widow Gamelin, — and pressed her stream-
ing cheeks to the girl’s.

For some moments they clung together without

14

210

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

a word. The poor mother was racking her brains
for some way of helping her daughter, and Julie
was watching the kind look in those tearful
eyes.

“Perhaps,” thought Evariste’s mother, “perhaps,
if I speak to him, he will be melted. He is good, he
is tender-hearted. If politics had not hardened
him, if he had not been influenced by the Jaco-
bins, he would never have had these cruel feel-
ings, that terrify me because I cannot under-
stand them.”

She took Julie’s head in her two hands:

“Listen, my child. I will speak to Evariste. I
will sound him, get him to see you and hear your
story. The sight of you might anger him; his first
impulse might be to turn against you. . . . And
then, I know him; this costume would offend him;
he is uncompromising in everything that touches
morals, that shocks the proprieties. I was a bit
startled to see my Julie dressed as a man.”

“Oh! mother, the emigration and the fearful dis-
orders of the kingdom have made these disguises
quite a common thing. They are adopted in order
to follow a trade, to escape recognition, to get a bor-
rowed passport or a certificate approved. In London
I saw young Girey dressed as a girl, — and he made a
very pretty girl; you must own, mother, that is a
more scandalous disguise than mine.”

“My poor child, you have no need to justify your-
self in my eyes, whether in this or any other thing.
I am your mother; for me you will always be blame-
less. I will speak to Evariste, I will say . . .”

She broke off. She knew what her son was; she
felt it in her heart, but she would not believe it, she
would not know it.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

211

“He is kind-hearted. He will do it for my sake
- . . for your sake, he will do what I ask him .”

The two women, weary to the death, fell silent.
Julie sank asleep, her head pillowed on the knees
where she had rested as a child, while the mother,
the rosary between her hands, wept, like another
mater dolorosa , over the calamities she felt draw-
ing stealthily nearer and nearer in the silence of
this day of snow when everything was hushed,
footsteps and carriage wheels and the very heaven
itself.

Suddenly, with a keenness of hearing sharpened
by anxiety, she caught the sound of her son’s steps
on the stairs.

“Evariste!” she cried. “Hide” — and she hurried
the girl into the bedroom.

“How are you to-day, mother dear?”

Evariste hung up his hat on its peg, changed his
blue coat for a working jacket and sat down before
his easel. For some days he had been working at
a sketch in charcoal of a Victory laying a wreath
on the brow of a dead soldier, who had died for the
fatherland. Once the subject would have called
out all his enthusiasm, but the Tribunal consumed
all his days and absorbed his whole soul, while his
hand had lost its knack from disuse and had grown
heavy and inert.

He hummed over the Qa ira .

“I hear you singing,” said the citoyenne Gamelin;
“you are light-hearted, Evariste?”

“We have reason to be glad, mother; there is
good news. La Vendee is crushed, the Austrians
beaten, the Army of the Rhine has forced the lines
of Lautern and of Wissembourg. The day is at
hand when the Republic triumphant will show her

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

clemency. Why must the conspirators' audacity
increase the mightier the Republic waxes in strength,
and traitors plot to strike the fatherland a blow in
the dark at the very moment her lightnings over-
whelm the enemies that assail her openly?”

The citoyenne Gamelin, as she sat knitting a stock-
ing, was watching her son's face over her spectacles.

“Berzelius, your old model, has been to ask for
the ten livres you owed him; I paid him. Little
Josephine has had a belly-ache from eating too much
of the preserves the carpenter gave her. So I made
her a drop of herb tea. . . . Desmahis has been to
see you; he was sorry he did not find you in. He
wanted to engrave a design by you. He thinks you
have great talent. He is a fine fellow; he looked at
your sketches and admired them.”

“When peace is re-established and conspiracy
suppressed,” said the painter, “I shall begin on my
Orestes again. It is not my way to flatter myself;
but that head is worthy of David's brush.”

He outlined with a majestic sweep the arm of his
Victory.

“She holds out palms,” he said. “But it would
be finer if her arms themselves were palms.”

“Evariste!”

“Mother?”

“I have had news . . . guess, of whom • . . ”

“I do not know.”

“Of Julie ... of your sister . . . She is not
happy.”

“It would be a scandal if she were.”

“Do not speak so, my son, she is your sister.
Julie is not a bad woman; she had a good disposition,
which misfortune has developed. She loves you. I
can assure you, Evariste, that she only desires a

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

213

hard-working, exemplary life and her fondest wish
is to be reconciled to her friends. There is nothing
to prevent your seeing her again. She has married
Fortune Chassagne.”

“She has written to you?”

“No.”

“How, then, have you had news of her, mother?”

“It was not by letter, Evariste; it was . . .”

He sprang up and stopped her with a savage cry:

“Not another word, mother! Do not tell me they
have both returned to France. ... As they are
doomed to perish, at least let it not be at my hands.
For their own sake, for yours, for mine, let me not
know they are in Paris. . . . Do not force the knowl-
edge on me; otherwise . .

“What do you mean, my son? you would think,
you would dare ... ? ”

“Mother, hear what I say; if I knew my sister
Julie to be in that room . . .” (and he pointed
at the closed door), “I should go instantly to de-
nounce her to the Committee of Vigilance of the
Section.”

The poor mother, her face as white as her coif,
dropped her knitting from her trembling hands and
sighed in a voice fainter than the faintest whisper:

“I would not believe it, but I see it now; my
boy is a monster. . . .”

As pale as she, the froth gathering on his lips,
Evariste fled from the house and ran to find at
Elodie’s side forgetfulness, sleep, the delicious fore-
taste of extinction.

XIX

HILE the Pere Longuemare and the
girl Athena'is were examined at the
Section, Brotteaux was led off be-
tween two gendarmes to the Luxem-
bourg, where the door-keeper refused
to admit him, declaring he had no
room left. The old financier was next
taken to the Conciergerie and brought into the
Gaoler’s office, quite a small room, divided in two
by a glazed partition. While the clerk was inscrib-
ing his name in the prison registers, Brotteaux could
see through the panes two men lying each on a tat-
tered mattress, both as still as death and with glazed
eyes that seemed to see nothing. Plates, bottles
and bits of broken bread and meat littered the floor
round them. They were prisoners condemned to
death and waiting for the cart to arrive.

The ci-devant Monsieur des Ilettes was thrust into
a dungeon, where by the light of a lantern he could
just make out two figures stretched on the ground,
one savage-looking and hideously mutilated, the
other graceful and pleasing. The two prisoners
offered him a share of their straw, and this, rotten
and swarming with vermin as it was, was better than
having to lie on the earth, which was befouled with
excrement. Brotteaux sank down on a bench in the
pestiferous darkness and sat there, his head against
the wall, speechless and motionless. So intense was
his agony of mind he would have dashed out his

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 215

brains against the stones if he had had the strength.
He could not breathe. His eyes swam, and a long-
drawn murmur, as soft as silence, filled his ears. He
felt his whole being bathed in a delicious semi-con-
sciousness. For one incomparable moment every-
thing was harmony, serenity, light, fragrance, sweet-
ness. Then he ceased to know or feel any-
thing.

When he returned to himself, the first notion that
entered his head was to regret his coma and, a
philosopher even in the stupor of despair, he reflected
how he had had to plunge to the depths of an under-
ground dungeon, there to await execution, to enjoy
the most exquisite of all voluptuous sensations he
had ever tasted. He tried hard to lose conscious-
ness again, but without success; on the contrary,
little by little he felt the poisonous air of the dungeon
fill his lungs and bring with it, along with the fever
of life, a full consciousness of his intolerable
wretchedness.

Meantime his two companions regarded his silence
as a cruel personal insult. Brotteaux, who was of
a sociable turn, endeavoured to satisfy their curiosity;
but when they discovered he was only what they
called “a political,” one of the mild sort whose
crime was only a matter of words and opinions, they
lost all respect and sympathy for him. The offences
charged against these two prisoners had more grit;
the older of the men was a murderer, the other had
been manufacturing forged assignats. Both made
the best of their situation and even found some
alleviations in it. Brotteaux’s thoughts suddenly
turned to the world above him, — how over his head
all was noise and bustle, light and life, while the
pretty shopwomen in the Palais de Justice behind

216 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

their counters, loaded with perfumery and pretty
knicknacks, smiled on their customers, happy people
free to go where they pleased, — and the picture
doubled his despair.

Night fell, unmarked in the darkness and silence
of the dungeon, but yet gloomy and oppressive.
One leg extended on his bench and his back propped
against the wall, Brotteaux fell into a doze. And lo!
he saw himself seated at the foot of a leafy beech,
in which the birds were singing; the setting sun
bathed the river in liquid fire and the clouds were
edged with purple. The night wore through. A
burning fever consumed him and he greedily drained
his pitcher to the dregs, but the fetid water only
increased his distress.

Next day the gaoler who brought the food prom-
ised Brotteaux, if he could afford the cost, to give
him the privileges of a prisoner who pays for his
accommodation, so soon as there should be room,
and it was not likely to be long first. And so it
turned out; two days later he invited the old finan-
cier to leave his dungeon. At every step he took
upwards, Brotteaux felt life and vigour coming back
to him, and when he saw a room with a red-tiled
floor and in it a bed of sacking covered with a dingy
woollen counterpane, he wept for joy. The gilded
bed carved with doves billing and cooing that he
had once had made for the prettiest of the dancers
at the Opera had not seemed^so^desirable or promised
him such delights.

This bed of sacking was in a large hall, very fairly
clean, which held seventeen others like it, separated
by high partitions of planks. The company that
occupied these quarters, composed of ex-nobles,
tradesmen, bankers, working-men, hit the old pub-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

217

lican's taste well enough, for he could accommodate
himself to persons of all qualities. He noticed that
these, cut off like himself from every opportunity
of pleasure and foredoomed to perish at the hand of
the executioner, were of a very merry humour and
showed a marked taste for wit and raillery. His
bent was to think lightly of mankind, so he attrib-
uted the high spirits of his companions to the frivolity
of their minds, which prevented them from looking
seriously at their situation. Moreover, he was
strengthened in his opinion by observing how the
more intelligent among them were profoundly sad.
He remarked before long, that, for the most part,
wine and brandy supplied the inspiration of a gaiety
that betrayed its source by its violent and some-
times almost insane character. They did not all pos-
sess courage; but all made a display of it. This
caused Brotteaux no surprise; he was well aware how
men will readily enough avow cruelty, passion, even
avarice, but never cowardice, because such an ad-
mission would bring them, among savages and even
in civilized society, into mortal danger. That is the
reason, he reflected, why all nations are nations of
heroes and all armies are made up of brave men
only.

More potent, even, than wine and brandy were
the rattle of weapons and keys, the clash of locks
and bolts, the cry of sentries, the stamping of feet
at the door of the Tribunal, to intoxicate the prison-
ers and fill their minds with melancholy, insanity,
or frenzy. Some there were who cut their throat
with a razor or threw themselves from a window.

Brotteaux had been living for three days in these
privileged quarters when he learned through the
turnkey that the Pere Longuemare was languishing

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

on the rotten verminous straw of the common prison
with the thieves and murderers. He had him put
on paying terms in the same room as himself, where
a bed had fallen vacant. Having promised to pay
for the monk, the old publican, who had no large
sum of money about him, struck out the idea of
making portraits at a crown apiece. By the help
of a gaoler, he procured a supply of small black
frames in which to put pretty little designs in hair
which he executed with considerable cleverness.
These productions sold well, being highly appre-
ciated among people whose thoughts were set on
leaving souvenirs to their friends.

The Pere Longuemare kept a good heart and a
high spirit. While waiting his summons to appear
before the Revolutionary Tribunal, he was prepar-
ing his defence. Drawing no distinction between
his own case and that of the Church, he promised
himself to expose to his judges the disorders and
scandals to which the Spouse of Christ was exposed
by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy; he proposed
to depict the eldest daughter of the Church waging
sacrilegious war upon the Pope, the French clergy
robbed, outraged, subjected to the odious domina-
tion of laics, the regulars, Christ’s true army, de-
spoiled and scattered. He cited St. Gregory the
Great and St. Irenaeus, quoted numerous articles of
the Canon Law and whole paragraphs from the
Decretals.

All day long he sat scribbling on his knees, at the
foot of his bed, dipping stumps of pens worn to the
feathers in ink, soot, coffee-grounds, covering with
illegible writing candle-wrappers, packing-paper,
newspapers, playing cards, even thinking of using
his shirt for the same purpose after starching it

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 219

Leaf by leaf the pile grew; .pointing to this mass of
undecipherable scrawls, he would say:

“Ah! when I appear before my judges, I will in-
undate them with light.”

Another day, casting a look of satisfaction on his
defence, which grew bulkier day by day, and think-
ing of these magistrates he was burning to confound,
he cried:

“I wouldn’t like to be in their shoes!”

The prisoners whom fate had brought together
in this prison-room were Royalists or Federalists,
there was even a Jacobin amongst the rest; they
held widely different views as to the right way of
conducting the business of the State, but not one of
them all preserved the smallest vestige of Christian
beliefs. Feuillants, Constitutionals, Girondists, all,
like Brotteaux, considered the Christians’ God a
very bad thing for themselves and an excellent one
for the people; as for the Jacobins, they were for
installing in the place of Jehovah a Jacobin god,
anxious to refer the dispensation of Jacobinism on
earth to a higher source. But as they could not con-
ceive, either one or the other, of anybody being so
absurd as to believe in any revealed religion, seeing
that the Pere Longuemare was no fool, they took him
to be a knave. By way, no doubt, of preparing for
martyrdom, he made confession of faith at every
opportunity, and the more sincerity he displayed,
the more like an impostor he seemed.

In vain Brotteaux stood surety for the monk’s
good faith; Brotteaux himself was reputed to be-
lieve only a part of what he said. His ideas were
too singular not to appear affected and satisfied
nobody entirely. He dubbed Jean-Jacques a dull,
paltry rascal. Voltaire, on the other hand, he

220 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

accounted among the divinely-gifted men, though
not on the same level as the amiable Helvetius, or
Diderot, or the Baron d’Holbach. In his opinion
the greatest genius of the century was Boulanger,
He also thought highly of the astronomer Lalande
and of Dupuis, author of a Memoir on the origin of
the Constellations .

The wits of the company made a thousand jokes
at the poor Barnabite’s expense, the point of which
he never saw; his simplicity saved him from every
pitfall. To drown the suspense that racked them
and escape the torments of idleness, the prisoners
played at draughts, cards and backgammon. No
instrument of music was allowed. After supper they
would sing, or recite verses. Voltaire’s La Pucelle
brought a little cheerfulness to these aching hearts,
and the company never wearied of hearing the tell-
ing passages repeated. But, unable to distract their
thoughts from the appalling vision that always
loomed before their mind’s eye, they strove some-
times to make a diversion of it, and in the chamber
of the eighteen beds, before turning in for the night,
they would play the game of the Revolutionary Tri-
bunal. The parts were distributed according to
tastes and aptitudes. While some represented the
judges and prosecutor, others were the accused or the
witnesses, others again the headsman and his men.
The trials invariably wound up with the execution
of the condemned, who were laid at full length on a
bed, the neck underneath a plank. The scene then
shifted to the infernal regions. The most agile of
the troop, wrapped in white sheets, played spectres.
There was a young avocat from Bordeaux, a man
named Dubose, short, dark, one-eyed, humpbacked,
bandy-legged, the very black deuce in person, who

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

221

used to come all horned and hoofed, to drag the Pere
Longuemare feet first out of his bed, announcing to
the culprit that he was condemned to the everlast-
ing flames of hell and doomed past redemption for
having made of the Creator of the Universe a jealous
being, a blockhead, and a bully, an enemy of human
happiness and love.

“Ah! ha! ha!” the devil would scream discord-
antly, “so you taught, you old bonze, that God de-
lights to see His creatures languish in contrition
and deny themselves His dearest gifts. Impostor,
hypocrite, sneak, sit on nails and eat egg-shells for
all eternity!”

The Pere Longuemare, for all reply, would observe
that the speech showed the philosopher’s cloven
hoof behind the devil’s and that the meanest imp
of hell would never have talked such foolishness,
having at least rubbed shoulders with Theology and
for certain being less ignorant than an Encyclo-
paedist.

But when the Girondist avocat called him a
Capuchin, he turned scarlet with anger and declared
that a man incapable of distinguishing a Barnabite
from a Franciscan was too blind to see a fly in milk.

The Revolutionary Tribunal was always drain-
ing the prisons, which the Committees were as un-
ceasingly replenishing; in three months the chamber
of the eighteen was half full of new faces. The
Pere Longuemare lost his tormentor. The avocat
Dubose was haled before the Revolutionary Tri-
bunal and condemned to death as a Federalist and
for having conspired against the unity of the Re-
public. On leaving the court, he returned, as the
prisoners always did, by a corridor that ran through
the prison and opened on the room he had enlivened

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

for three months with his gaiety. As he made his
farewells to his companions, he maintained the
same light tone and cheerful air that were habitual
with him.

“Forgive me, sir,” he said to the Pere Longue-
mare, “for having hauled you feet foremost from
your bed. I will never do it again.”

Then, turning to old Brotteaux:

“Good-bye, I go before you into the land of no-
where. I gladly return to Nature the atoms of my
composition, only hoping she will make a better use
of them for the future, for it must be owned she did
not make much of a job of me.”

So he went on his way to the gaoler’s room, leav-
ing Brotteaux sorrowful and the Pere Longuemare
trembling and green as a leaf, more dead than alive
to see the impious wretch laugh on the brink of the
abyss.

When Germinal brought back the bright days,
Brotteaux, who was of an ardent temperament,
tramped down several times every day to the court-
yard giving on the women’s quarters, near the foun-
tain where the female prisoners used to come of a
morning to wash their linen. An iron railing sepa-
rated the two barracks; but the bars were not so
close together as to hinder hands joining and lips
meeting. Under the kindly shade of night loving
couples would press against the obstacle. At such
times Brotteaux would retire discreetly to the stair-
case and, sitting on a step, would draw from the
pocket of his plum-coloured surtout his little Lucre-
tius and read, by the light of a lantern, some of the
author’s sternly consolatory maxims: “Sic ubi non
erimus. . . . When we shall have ceased to be, noth-
ing will have power to move us, not even the heavens

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

223

and earth and sea confounding their shattered frag-
ments. . . But, in the act of enjoying his exalted
wisdom, Brotteaux would find himself envying the
Barnabite this craze that veiled the universe from
his eyes.

Month by month terror grew more intense. Every
night the tipsy gaolers, their watch-dogs at their
heels, would march from cell to cell, delivering acts
of accusation, howling out names they mutilated,
waking the prisoners and for twenty victims marked
on their list terrifying two hundred. Along these
corridors, reeking with bloody memories, passed
every day, without a murmur, twenty, thirty, fifty
condemned prisoners, old men, women, young men
and maidens, so widely different in rank and char-
acter and opinion that the question rose involun-
tarily to the lips, — had they not been chosen by
lot?

And the card playing went on, the Burgundy
drinking, the making of plans, the assignations for
after dark at the rails. The company, new almost
to a man, now consisted in great part of “extre-
mists” and “irreconcilables.” But still the room
of the eighteen beds remained the home of elegance
and good breeding; barring two prisoners recently
transferred from the Luxembourg to the Conciergerie
and added to the company, by whom they were
suspected of being spies, the citoyens Navette and
Bellier by name, there were none but honest folk
there who reposed a mutual trust in each other.
Glass in hand, the victories of the Republic were
celebrated by all. Amongst the rest were several
poets, as there always are in any gathering of people
with nothing to do. The most accomplished com-
posed odes on the triumphs of the Army of the Rhine,

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

which they recited with much mouthing. They
were uproariously applauded. Brotteaux was the
only lukewarm admirer of the victors and the bards
who sang their victories.

“ Since Homer began it,” he observed one day,
“it has always been a mania with poets, this extoll-
ing the powers of fighting-men. War is not an art,
and luck alone decides the fate of battles. With two
generals, both blockheads, face to face, one of them
must inevitably be victorious. Wait till some day
one of these warriors you make gods of swallows you
all up like the stork in the fable who gobbles up the
frogs. Ah! then he would be really and truly a
God! For you can always tell the gods by their
appetite.”

Brotteaux’s head had never been turned by the
glamour of arms. He felt no triumph at the victories
of the Republic, which he had foreseen. He did not
like the new regime, which military success con-
firmed. He was a malcontent. Another would have
been the same for less cause.

One morning it was announced that the Commis-
saries of the Committee of General Security were
going to institute a search in the prisoners* quarters,
that they would seize assignats, articles of gold and
silver, knives, scissors; that similar proceedings had
been taken at the Luxembourg, where letters, papers,
and books had been taken possession of.

Thereupon everyone tried to think of some hiding
place in which to secure whatever he held most
precious. The Pere Longuemare carried away his
defence in armfuls to a rain-gutter, while Brotteaux
slipped his Lucretius among the ashes on the
hearth.

When the Commissaries, wearing tricolour ribands

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 225

at their necks, arrived to carry out their perquisi-
tion, they found scarcely anything but such trifles
as it had been deemed judicious to let them discover.
On their departure, the Pere Longuemare ran to his
rain-pipe and rescued as much of his defence as
wind and water had spared. Brotteaux pulled out
his Lucretius from the fireplace all black with soot.

“Let us make the best of the presen t,” he thought,
“for I augur from sundry tokens that our time is
straitly measured from henceforth.”

One soft night in Prairial, while over the prison
yard the moon riding high in a pale sky showed her
two silver horns, the ex-financier, who, as his way
was, sat reading Lucretius on a step of the stone
stairs, heard a voice call him, a woman’s voice, a
delightful voice, which he did not know. He went
down into the court and saw behind the railing a
form which he recognized as little as he did the voice,
but which reminded him, in its half-seen fascinating
outlines, of all the women he had loved. A flood of
silvery blue moonlight fell on it. Next instant
Brotteaux recognized the pretty actress of the Rue
Feydeau, Rose Thevenin.

“You here, my child! It is a joy to see you, but
it stabs my heart. Since when have you been here,
and why?”

“Since yesterday,” — and she added very low:

“I have been denounced as a Royalist. They
accuse me of conspiring to set free the Queen. Know-
ing you were here, I tried at once to see you. Listen
to me, dear friend . . . you will let me call you
so? ... I know people in power; I have sympa-
thizers, I am sure of it, on the Committee of Public
Safety itself. I will set my friends to work; they
will deliver me, and I will deliver you.”

15

226

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

But Brotteaux in a voice that took on an accent
of urgency:

“By everything you hold dear, my child, do
nothing of the sort! Do not write, do not petition;
ask nothing of anybody, I conjure you, let yourself
be forgotten.”

As she appeared unconvinced by what he said, he
went on more beseechingly still :

“Not a word, Rose, let them forget you; there
lies safety. Anything your friends might attempt
would only hasten your undoing. Time is every-
thing; only a short delay, a .very short one, I hope,
is needed to save you. . . . Above all, never try to
melt the judges, the jurors, a Gamelin. They are
not men, they are things; there is no arguing with
things. Let them forget you; if you take my ad-
vice, sweetheart, I shall die happy, happy to have
saved your life.”

She answered:

“I will do as you say. . . . Never talk of
dying.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“My life is ended, my child. Do you live and
be happy.”

She tookjhis hands and laid them on her bosom:

“Hear what I say, dear friend. ... I have only
seen you once for a day, and yet you are not indif-
ferent to me. And if what I am going to tell you
can renew your attachment to life, oh! believe my
promise, — I will be for you . . . whatever you shall
wish me to be.”

And they exchanged a kiss on the mouth through
the bars.

XX

VARISTE GAMELIN, as he sat,
one day that a long, tedious case was
before the Tribunal, on the jury-
bench in the stifling court, closed his
eyes and thought:

“Evil-doers, by forcing Marat to
hide in holes and corners, had turned
him into a bird of night, the bird of Minerva, whose
glance pierced the dark recesses where conspirators
lurked. Now it is a blue eye, cold and calm, that
discovers the enemies of the State and denounces
traitors with a subtlety unknown even to the Friend
of the People, now asleep for ever in the garden of
the Cordeliers. The new saviour of the country, as
zealous and more keen-sighted than the first, sees
what no man before had seen and with a lifted finger
spreads terror broadcast. He discerns the fine, im-
perceptible shades of difference that divide evil from
good, vice from virtue, which but for him would have
been confounded, to the hurt of the fatherland and
freedom, he marks out before him the thin, inflexible
line outside which lies, to the right hand and to the
left, only error, crime, and wickedness. The Incor-
ruptible teaches how men serve the foreigner equally
by excess of zeal and by supineness, by persecuting
the religious in the name of reason no less than by
fighting in the name of religion against the laws of
the Republic. Every whit as much as the villains
who immolated Le Peltier and Marat, do they serve

227

228 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

the foreigner who decree them divine honours, to
compromise their memory. Agent of the foreigner
whosoever repudiates the ideas of order, wisdom, op-
portunity; agent of the foreigner whosoever out-
rages morals, scandalizes virtue, and, in the foolish-
ness of his heart, denies God. Yes, fanatic priests
deserve to die; but there is an anti-revolutionary
way of combating fanaticism; abjurers, too, may
be guilty of a crime. By moderation men destroy
the Republic; by violence they do the same.

“August and terrible the functions of a judge, —
functions defined by the wisest of mankind! It is
not aristocrats alone, federalists, scoundrels of the
Orleans faction, open enemies of the fatherland,
that we must strike down. The conspirator, the
agent of the foreigner is a Proteus, he assumes all
shapes, he puts on the guise of a patriot, a revolu-
tionary, an enemy of Kings; he affects the boldness
of a heart that beats only for freedom; his voice
swells, and the foes of the Republic tremble. His
name is Danton; his violence is a poor cloak to his
odious moderatism, and his base corruption is mani-
fest at last. The conspirator, the agent of the for-
eigner is that fluent stammerer, the man who clapped
the first cockade of revolution in his hat, that
pamphleteer who, in his ironical and cruel patriot-
ism, nicknamed himself, ‘The procureur of the
Lantern.’ His name is Camille Desmoulins. He
threw off the mask by defending the Generals,
traitors to their country, and claiming measures of
clemency criminal at such a time. There was Philip-
peaux, there was Herault, there was the despicable
Lacroix. There was the Pere Duchesne, he, too, a
conspirator and agent of the foreigner, the vile
demagogue who degraded liberty, and whose filthy

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 229

calumnies stirred sympathy for Antoinette herself.
There was Chaumette, who yet was a mild man,
popular, moderate, well-intentioned, and virtuous
in the administration of the Commune; but he was
an atheist! Conspirators, agents of the foreigner, —
such were all those sansculottes in red cap and car-
magnole and sabots who recklessly outbid the Jaco-
bins in patriotism. Conspirator and agent of the
foreigner was Anacharsis Cloots, ‘orator of the
human race/ condemned to die by all the Mon-
archies of the world; but everything was to be
feared of him, — he was a Prussian.

“Now violent or moderate, all these evil-doers, all
these traitors, — Danton, Desmoulins, Hebert, Chau-
mette, — have perished under the axe. The Repub-
lic is saved; a chorus of praises rises from all the
Committees and the popular assemblies one and all
to greet Maximilien and the Mountain . Good
citizens cry aloud: ‘Worthy representatives of a
free people, in vain have the sons of the Titans lifted
their proud heads; oh! mountain of blessing, oh!
protecting Sinai, from thy tumultuous bosom has
issued the saving lightning. . . •

“In this chorus the Tribunal has its meed of
praise. How sweet a thing it is to be virtuous, and
how dear to public gratitude, to the heart of the
upright judge!

“Meanwhile, for a patriot heart, what food for
amazement, what motives for anxiety! What! to
betray the people’s cause, it was not enough to have
a Mirabeau, a La Fayette, a Bailly, a Petion, a
Brissot? We must likewise have the men who de-
nounced these traitors. Can it be that all the pa-
triots who made the Revolution only wrought to
ruin her? that these heroes of the great days were

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but contriving with Pitt and Coburg to give the
kingdom to the Orleans and set up a Regency under
Louis XVII? What! Danton was another Monk.
What! Chaumette and the Hebertists, falser than
the Federalists who sent them to the guillotine, had
conspired to destroy the State! But among those
who hurried to their death the traitor Danton and
the traitor Chaumette, will not the blue eye of
Robespierre discover anon more perfidious traitors
yet? What will be the end of this hideous concat-
enation of traitors betrayed and the revelations of
the keen-sighted Incorruptible? . .

XXI

EANTIME Julie Gamelin, in her
bottle-green box-coat, went every day
to the Luxembourg Gardens and
there, on a bench at the end of one
of the avenues, sat waiting for the
moment when her lover should show
his face at one of the dormers of the
Palace. Then they would beckon to each other and
talk together in a language of signs they had in-
vented. In this way she learned that the prisoner
occupied a fairly good room and had pleasant com-
panions, that he wanted a blanket for his bed and a
kettle and loved his mistress fondly.

She was not the only one to watch for the sight
of a dear face at a window of the Palace now turned
into a prison. A young mother not far from her kept
her eyes fixed on a closed casement; then directly
she saw it open, she would lift her little one in her
arms above her head. An old lady in a lace veil
sat for long hours on a folding-chair, vainly hoping
to catch a momentary glimpse of her son, who, for
fear of breaking down, never left his game of quoits
in the courtyard of the prison till the hour when
the gardens were closed.

During these long hours of waiting, whether the
sky were blue or overcast, a man of middle age,
rather stout and very neatly dressed, was constantly
to be seen on a neighbouring bench, playing with
his snuff-box and the charms on his watch-guard or

231

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

unfolding a newspaper, which he never read. He
was dressed like a bourgeois of the old school in a
gold-laced cocked hat, a plum-coloured coat and
blue waistcoat embroidered in silver. He looked
well-meaning enough, and was something of a mu-
sician to judge by a flute, one end of which peeped
from his pocket. Never for a moment did his eyes
wander from the supposed stripling, on whom he
bestowed continual smiles, and when he saw him
leave his seat, he would get up himself and follow
him at a distance. Julie, in her misery and lone-
liness, was touched by the discreet sympathy the
good man manifested.

One day, as she was leaving the gardens, it began
to rain; the old fellow stepped up to her and, opening
his vast red umbrella, asked permission to offer her
its shelter. She answered sweetly, in her clear treble,
that she would be very glad. But at the sound of
her voice and warned perhaps by a subtle scent of
womanhood, he strode rapidly away, leaving the
girl exposed to the rain-storm; she took in the situa-
tion, and, despite her gnawing anxieties, could not
restrain a smile.

Julie lived in an attic in the Rue du Cherche-Midi
and represented herself as a draper's shop-boy in
search of employment; the widow Gamelin, at last
convinced that the girl was running smaller risks
anywhere else than at her home, had got her away
from the Place de Thionville and the Section du
Pont-Neuf, and was giving her all the help she could
in the way of food and linen. Julie did her trifle of
cooking, went to the Luxembourg to see her beloved
prisoner and back again to her garret; the monotony
of the life was a balm to her grief, and, being young
and strong, she slept well and soundly the night

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

233

through. She was of a fearless temper and broken
in to an adventurous life; the costume she wore
added perhaps a further spice of excitement, and
she would sometimes sally out at night to visit a
restaurateur’s in the Rue du Four, at the sign of
the Red Cross, a place frequented by men of all
sorts and conditions and women of gallantry. There
she read the papers or played backgammon with
some tradesman’s clerk or citizen-soldier, who
smoked his pipe in her face. Drinking, gambling,
love-making were the order of the day, and scuffles
were not unfrequent. One evening a customer, hear-
ing a trampling of hoofs on the paved roadway out-
side, lifted the curtain, and recognizing the Com-
mandant-in-Chief of the National Guard, the citoyen
Hanriot, who was riding past with his Staff, mut-
tered between his teeth:

“There goes Robespierre’s jackass !”

Julie overheard and burst into a loud guffaw.

But a moustachioed patriot took up the challenge
roundly:

“Whoever says that,” he shouted, “is a bl . • . st-
ed aristocrat, and I should like to see the fellow
sneeze into Samson’s basket. I tell you General
Hanriot is a good patriot who’ll know how to defend
Paris and the Convention at a pinch. That’s why
the Royalists can’t forgive him.”

Glaring at Julie, who was still laughing, the patriot
added:

“You there, greenhorn, have a care I don’t land
you a kick in the backside to learn you to respect
good patriots.”

But other voices were joining in:

“Hanriot’s a drunken sot and a fool!”

“Hanriot’s a good Jacobin! Vive Hanriot!”

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Sides were taken, and the fray began. Blows were
exchanged, hats battered in, tables overturned, and
glasses shivered; the lights went out and the women
began to scream. Two or three patriots fell upon
Julie, who seized hold of a settle in self-defence; she
was brought to the ground, where she scratched and
bit her assailants. Her coat flew open and her neck-
erchief was torn, revealing her panting bosom. A
patrol came running up at the noise, and the
girl aristocrat escaped between the gendarmes’
legs.

Every day the carts were full of victims for the
guillotine.

“But I cannot, I cannot let my lover die!” Julie
would tell her mother.

She resolved to beg his life, to take what steps
were possible, to go to the Committees and Public
Departments, to canvas Representatives, Magis-
trates, to visit anyone who could be of help. She
had r.o woman’s dress to wear. Her mother bor-
rowed a striped gown, a kerchief, a lace coif from
the citoyenne Blaise, and Julie, attired as a woman
and a patriot, set out for the abode of one of the
judges, Renaudin, a damp, dismal house in the
Rue Mazarine.

With trembling steps she climbed the wooden,
tiled stairs and was received by the judge in his
squalid cabinet, furnished with a deal table and two
straw-bottomed chairs. The wall-paper hung in
strips. Renaudin, with black hair plastered on his
forehead, a lowering eye, tucked-in lips, and a pro-
tuberant chin, signed to her to speak and listened
in silence.

She told him she was the sister of the citoyen
Chassagne, a prisoner at the Luxembourg, explained

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235

as speciously as she could the circumstances under
which he had been arrested, represented him as an
innocent man, the victim of mischance, pleaded more
and more urgently; but he remained callous and
unsympathetic.

She fell at his feet in supplication and burst into
tears.

No sooner did he see her tears than his face
changed; his dark blood-shot eyes lit up, and his
heavy blue jowl worked as if pumping up the saliva
in his dry throat.

“ Citoyenne, we will do what is necessary. You
need have no anxiety,” — and opening a door, he
pushed the petitioner into a little sitting-room, with
rose-pink hangings, painted panels, Dresden china
figures, a time-piece and gilt candelabra; for furni-
ture it contained settees, and a sofa covered in tap-
estry and adorned with a pastoral group after
Boucher. Julie was ready for anything to save her
lover.

Renaudin had his way, — rapidly and brutally.
When she got up, readjusting the citoyenne’s pretty
frock, she met the man’s cruel mocking eye; in-
stantly she knew she had made her sacrifice in vain.

“You promised me my brother’s freedom,” she
said.

He chuckled.

“I told you, citoyenne, we would do what was
necessary, — that is to say, we should apply the law,
neither more nor less. I told you to have no anxiety,
— and why should you be anxious? The Revolu-
tionary Tribunal is always just.”

She thought of throwing herself upon the man,
biting him, tearing out his eyes. But, realizing she
would only be consummating Fortune Chassagne’s

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ruin, she rushed from the house, and fled to her
garret to take off Elodie’s soiled and desecrated
frock. All night she lay, screaming with grief and
rage.

Next day, on returning to the Luxembourg, she
found the gardens occupied by gendarmes, who were
turning out the women and children. Sentinels were
posted in the avenues to prevent the passers-by from
communicating with the prisoners. The young
mother, who used to come every day, carrying her
child in her arms, told Julie that there was talk of
plotting in the prisons and that the women were
blamed for gathering in the gardens in order to
rouse the people’s pity in favour of aristocrats and
traitors.

XXII

MOUNTAIN has suddenly sprung up
in the garden of the Tuileries. Under
a cloudless sky, Maximilien heads
the procession of his colleagues in a
blue coat and yellow breeches, carry-
ing in his hand a bouquet of wheat-
ears, cornflowers and poppies. He
ascends the mountain and proclaims the God of
Jean-Jacques to the Republic, which hears and
weeps. Oh purity! oh sweetness! oh faith! oh an-
tique simplicity! oh tears of pity! oh fertilizing dew!
oh clemency! oh human fraternity!

In vain Atheism still lifts its hideous face; Maxi-
milien grasps a torch; flames devour the monster
and Wisdom appears, with one hand pointing to the
sky, in the other holding a crown of stars.

On the platform raised against the fa£ade of the
Tuileries, fivariste, standing amid a throng of
deeply-stirred spectators, sheds tears of joy and
renders thanks to God. An era of universal felicity
opens before his eyes.

He sighs:

“At last we shall be happy, pure, innocent, if the
scoundrels suffer it.”

Alas! the scoundrels have not suffered it. There
must be more executions; more torrents of tainted
blood must be shed. Three days after the festival
celebrating the new alliance and the reconciliation
of heaven and earth, the Convention promulgates

237

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the Law of Prairial which suppresses, with a sort
of ferocious good-nature, all the traditional forms
of Law, whatever has been devised since the time
of the Roman jurisconsults for the safeguarding of
innocence under suspicion. No more sifting of evi-
dence, no more questioning of the accused, no more
witnesses, no more counsel for the defence; love of
the fatherland supplies everything that is needful.
The prisoner, who bears locked up in his bosom his
guilt or innocence, passes without a word allowed
before the patriot jury, and it is in this brief moment
they must unravel his case, often complicated and
obscure. How is justice possible? How distinguish
in an instant between the honest man and the villain,
the patriot and the enemy of the fatherland . . .?

Disconcerted for the moment, Gamelin quickly
learned his new duties and accommodated himself
to his new functions. He recognized that this cur-
tailment of formalities was genuinely characteristic
of the new justice, at once salutary and terrifying,
the administrators of which were no longer ermined
pedants leisurely weighing the pros and contras in
their Gothic balances, but good sansculottes judg-
ing by inspiration and seeing the whole truth in a
flash. When guarantees and precautions would
have undone everything, the impulses of an up-
right heart saved the situation. We must follow
the promptings of Nature, the good mother who
never deceives; the heart must teach us to do judg-
ment, and Gamelin made invocation to the manes
of Jean-Jacques:

“Man of virtue, inspire me with the love of men,
the ardent desire to regenerate humankind 1”

His colleagues, for the most part, felt with him.
They were, first and foremost, simple people; and

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239

when the forms of law were simplified, they felt more
comfortable. Justice thus abbreviated satisfied
them; the pace was quickened, and no obstacles
were left to fret them. They limited themselves to
an inquiry into the opinions of the accused, not con-
ceiving it possible that anyone could think differ-
ently from themselves except in pure perversity.
Believing themselves the exclusive possessors of truth,
wisdom, the quintessence of good, they attributed
to their opponents nothing but error and evil. They
felt themselves all-powerful; they envisaged God.

They saw God, these jurors of the Revolutionary
Tribunal. The Supreme Being, acknowledged by
Maximilien, flooded them with His flames of light.
They loved, they believed.

The chair of the accused had been replaced by a
vast platform able to accommodate fifty persons;
the court only dealt with batches now. The Public
Prosecutor would often confound under the same
charge or implicate as accomplices individuals who
met each other for the first time before the Tribunal.
The latter, taking advantage of the terrible facilities
accorded by the law of Prairial, sat in judgment on
those supposed prison plots which, coming after the
proscriptions of the Dantonists and the Commune,
were made to seem their outcome by the insinuations
of cunning adversaries. In fact, to let the world
appreciate the two essential characteristics of a
conspiracy fomented by foreign gold against the
Republic, — to wit inopportune moderation on the
one hand and self-interested excess of zeal on the
other, they had united in the same condemnation
two very different women, the widow of Camille
Desmoulins, poor lovable Lucille, and the widow of
the Hebertist Momoro, goddess of a day and jolly

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companion all her life. Both, to make the analogy
complete, had been shut up in the same prison, where
they had mingled their tears on the same bench;
both, to round off the resemblance, had climbed the
scaffold. Too ingenious the symbol, — a master-
piece of equilibrium, conceived doubtless by a law-
yer’s brain, and the honour of which was given to
Maximilien. This representative of the people was
accredited with every eventuality, happy or unhappy,
that came about in the Republic, every change that
was effected in the laws, in manners and morals, the
very course of the seasons, the harvests, the inci-
dence of epidemics. Unjust of course, but not un-
merited the injustice, for indeed the man, the little,
spruce, cat-faced dandy, was all powerful with the
people. . . .

That day the Tribunal was clearing off a batch
of prisoners involved in the great plot, thirty or
more conspirators from the Luxembourg, submis-
sive enough in gaol, but Royalists or Federalists of
the most pronounced type. The prosecution relied
almost entirely on the evidence of a single informer.
The jurors did not know one word of the matter, —
not so much as the conspirators’ names. Gamelin,
casting his eye over the prisoners’ bench, recognized
Fortune Chassagne among the accused. Julie’s
lover, pale-faced and emaciated by long confinement
and his features showing coarser in the glare of light
that flooded the hall, still retained traces of his old
grace and proud bearing. His eyes met Gamelin’s
and filled with scorn.

Gamelin, possessed by a calm fury, rose, asked
leave to speak, and, fixing his eyes on the bust of
Roman Brutus, which looked down on the
Tribunal:

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

241

“ Citoyen President,” he said, “although there
may exist between one of the accused and myself
ties which, if they were made public, would be ties
of married kinship, I hereby declare I do not decline
to act. The two Bruti did not decline their duty,
when for the salvation of the state and the cause of
freedom, the one had to condemn a son, the other
to strike down an adoptive father.”

He resumed his seat.

“A fine scoundrel that,” muttered Chassagne
between his teeth.

The public remained cold, whether because it was
tired of high-flown characters, or thinking that
Gamelin had triumphed too easily over his feelings
of family affection.

“ Citoyen Gamelin,” said the President, “by the
terms of the law, every refusal must be formulated
in writing within the twenty-four hours preceding
the opening of the trial. In any case, you have no
reason to refuse; a patriot jury is superior to human
passions.”

Each prisoner was questioned for three or four
minutes, the examination resulting in a verdict of
death in every instance. The jurors voted without
a word said, by a nod of the head or by exclamation.
When Gamelin’s turn came to pronounce his
opinion:

“All the accused,” he declared, “are convicted,
and the law is explicit.”

As he was descending the stairway of the Palais de
Justice, a young man dressed in a bottle-green box-
coat, and who looked seventeen or eighteen years of
age, stopped him abruptly as he went by. The lad
wore a round hat, tilted on the back of his head, the
brim framing his fine pale face in a dark aureole.

16

242 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

Facing the juror, in a terrible voice vibrating with
passion and despair:

“Villain, monster, murderer!” he screamed.
“Strike me, coward! I am a woman! Have me
arrested, have me guillotined, Cain! I am your
sister,” — and Julie spat in his face.

The throng of tricoteuses and sansculottes was re-
laxing by this time in its Revolutionary vigilance;
its civic zeal had largely cooled; Gamelin and his
assailant found themselves the centre of nothing
worse than uproar and confusion. Julie fought a
way through the press and disappeared in the dark.

XXIII

VARISTE Gamelin was worn out and
could not rest; twenty times in the
night he would awake with a start
from a sleep haunted by nightmares.
It was only in the blue chamber, in
Elodie’s arms, that he could snatch
a few hours’ slumber. He talked and
cried out in his sleep and used often to awake her;
but she could make nothing of what he said.

One morning, after a night when he had seen the
Eumenides, he started awake, broken with terror
and weak as a child. The dawn was piercing the
window curtains with its wan arrows. Evariste’s hair,
lying tangled on his brow, covered his eyes with a
black veil; Elodie, by the bedside, was gently part-
ing the wild locks. She was looking at him now,
with a sister’s tenderness, while with her handker-
chief she wiped away the icy sweat from the un-
happy man’s forehead. Then he remembered that
fine scene in the Orestes of Euripides, which he had
essayed to represent in a picture that, if he could
have finished it, would have been his masterpiece
— the scene where the unhappy Electra wipes away
the spume that sullies her brother’s lips. And he
seemed to hear Elodie also saying in a gentle voice:

“Hear me, beloved brother, while the Furies
leave you master of your reason . .

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244 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST
And he thought:

“And yet I am no parricide. Far from it, it is
filial piety has made me shed the tainted blood of
the enemies of my fatherland.”

XXIV

HERE seemed no end to these trials for
conspiracy in the prisons. Forty-
nine accused crowded the tiers of
seats. Maurice Brotteaux occupied
the right-hand corner of the topmost
row, — the place of honour. He was
dressed in his plum-coloured surtout,
which he had brushed very carefully the day before
and mended at the pocket where his little Lucretius
had ended by fretting a hole. Beside him sat the
woman Rochemaure, painted and powdered and
patched, a brilliant and ghastly figure. They had
put the Pere Longuemare between her and the girl
Athenais, who had recovered her look of youthful
freshness at the Madelonnettes.

On the platform the gendarmes massed a number
of other prisoners unknown to any of our friends,
and who, as likely as not, knew nothing of each
other, — yet accomplices one and all, — lawyers, jour-
nalists, ci-devant nobles, citizens, and citizens’ wives.
The citoyenne Rochemaure caught sight of Gamelin
on the jurors’ bench. He had not answered her
urgent letters and repeated messages; still she had
not abandoned hope and threw him a look of suppli-
cation, trying to appear fascinating and pathetic
for him. But the young juror’s cold glance robbed
her of any illusion she might have entertained.

The Clerk read the act of accusation, which, suc-
cinct as was its reference to each individual, was a

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246 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

lengthy document because of the great number
accused. It began by exposing in general outline
the plot concocted in the prisons to drown the Re-
public in the blood of the Representatives of the na-
tion and the people of Paris; then, coming to each
severally, it went on :

“One of the most mischievous authors of this abom-
inable conspiracy is the man Brotteaux, once known
as des Ilettes, receiver of imposts under the tyrant.
This person, who was remarkable, even in the days of
tyranny, for his libertine behaviour, is a sure proof
how dissoluteness and immorality are the greatest
enemies of the liberty and happiness of peoples; as
a fact, after misappropriating the public revenues
and wasting in debauchery a noticeable part of the
people’s patrimony, the person in question connived
with his former concubine, the woman Rochemaure,
to enter into correspondence with the emigres and
traitorously keep the faction of the foreigner in-
formed of the state of our finances, the movements
of our troops, the fluctuations of public opinion.

“ Brotteaux, who, at this period of his despicable
life, was living in concubinage with a prostitute he
had picked up in the mud of the Rue Fromenteau,
the girl Athenais, easily suborned her to his pur-
poses and made use of her to foment the counter-
revolution by impudent and unpatriotic cries and
indecent and traitorous speeches.

“Sundry remarks of this ill-omened individual will
afford you a clear indication of his abject views and
pernicious purpose. Speaking of the patriotic tri-
bunal now called upon to punish him, he declared
insultingly, — ‘The Revolutionary Tribunal is like a
play of William Shakespeare, who mixes up with the
most bloodthirsty scenes the most trivial buffoon-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 247

eries.’ Then he was forever preaching atheism, as
the surest means of degrading the people and driving
it into immorality. In the prison of the Con-
ciergerie, where he was confined, he used to deplore
as among the worst of calamities the victories of
our valiant armies, and tried to throw suspicion on
the most patriotic Generals, crediting them with
designs of tyrannicide. ‘Only wait,’ he would say
in atrocious language which the pen is loath to re-
produce, ‘only wait till, some day, one of these
warriors, to whom you owe your salvation, swallows
you all up as the stork in the fable gobbled up the
frogs.’

“The woman Rochemaure, a ci-devant noble, con-
cubine of Brotteaux, is not less culpable than he.
Not only was she in correspondence with the for-
eigner and in the pay ot Pitt himself, but in com-
plicity with swindlers, such as Jullien (of Toulouse)
and Chabot, associates of the ci-devant Baron de
Batz, she seconded that reprobate in all sorts of
cunning machinations to depreciate the shares of
the Company of the Indies, buy them in at a cheap
price, and then raise the quotation by artifices of an
opposite tendency, to the confusion and ruin of
private fortunes and of the public funds. Incar-
cerated at La Bourbe and the Madelonnettes, she
never ceased in prison to conspire, to dabble in
stocks and shares and to devote herself to attempts
at corruption, to suborn judges and jury.

“Louis Longuemare, ex-noble, ex-capuchin, had
long been practised in infamy and crime before com-
mitting the acts of treason for which he has to an-
swer here. Living in a shameful promiscuity with
the girl Gorcut, known as Athenai's, under Brot-
teaux’s very roof, he is the accomplice of the said girl

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

and the said ci-devant nobleman. During his impris-
onment at the Conciergerie he has never ceased for
one single day writing pamphlets aimed at the
subversion of public liberty and security.

“It is right to say, with regard to Marthe Gorcut,
known as Athena'is, that prostitutes are the greatest
scourge of public morality, which they insult, and
the opprobrium of the society which they disgrace.
But why speak at length of revolting crimes which
the accused confesses shamelessly v . . . ?”

The accusation then proceeded to pass in review
the fifty-four other prisoners, none of whom either
Brotteaux, or the Pere Longuemare, or the citoyenne
Rochemaure, were acquainted with, except for hav-
ing seen several of them in the prisons, but who
were one and all included with the first named in
“this odious plot, with which the annals of the na-
tion can furnish nothing to compare.”

The piece concluded by demanding the penalty of
death for all the culprits.

Brotteaux was the first to be examined:

“You were in the plot?”

“No, I have been in no plots. Every word is un-
true in the act of accusation I have just heard
read.”

“There, you see; you are plotting still, at this
moment, to discredit the Tribunal,” — and the Presi-
dent went on to the woman Rochemaure, who an-
swered with despairing protestations of innocence,
tears and quibblings.

The Pere Longuemare referred himself purely and
entirely to God’s will. He had not even brought his
written defence with him.

All the questions put to him he answered in a
spirit of resignation. Only, when the President

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 249

spoke of him as a Capuchin, did the old Adam wake
again in him:

“I am not a Capuchin,” he said, “I am a priest
and a monk of the Order of the Barnabites.”

“It is the same thing,” returned the President
good-naturedly.

The Pere Longuemare looked at him indignantly:

“One cannot conceive a more extraordinary
error,” he cried, “than to confound with a Capuchin
a monk of this Order of the Barnabites which de-
rives its constitutions from the Apostle Paul himself.”

The remark was greeted with a burst of laughter
and hooting from the spectators, at which the Pere
Longuemare, taking this derision to betoken a de-
nial of his proposition, announced that he would die
a member of this Order of St. Barnabas, the habit of
which he wore in his heart.

“Do you admit,” asked the President, “entering
into plots with the girl Gorcut, known as Athenais,
the same who accorded you her despicable favours?”

At the question, the Pere Longuemare raised his
eyes sorrowfully to heaven, but made no answer; his
silence expressed the surprise of an unsophisticated
mind and the gravity of a man of religion who fears
to utter empty words.

“You, the girl Gorcut,” the President asked, turn-
ing to Athanais, “do you admit plotting in con-
junction with Brotteaux?”

Her answer was softly spoken:

“Monsieur Brotteaux, to my knowledge, has
done nothing but good. He is a man of the sort we
should have more of; there is no better sort. Those
who say the contrary are mistaken. That is all I
have to say.”

The President asked her if she admitted having

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

lived in concubinage with Brotteaux. The ex-
pression had to be explained to her, as she did not
understand it. But, directly she gathered what
the question meant, she answered, that would only
have depended on him, but he had never asked
her.

There was a laugh in the public galleries, and
the President threatened the girl Gorcut to refuse
her a hearing if she answered in such a cynical sort
again.

At this she broke out, calling him sneak, sour face,
cuckold, and spewing out over him, judges, and jury
a torrent of invective, till the gendarmes dragged her
from her bench and hustled her out of the hall.

The President then proceeded to a brief examina-
tion of the rest of the accused, taking them in the
order in which they sat on the tiers of benches.

One, a man named Navette, pleaded that he could
not have plotted in prison where he had only spent
four days. The President observed that the point
deserved to be considered, and begged the citoyens
of the jury to make a note of it. A certain Bellier
said the same, and the President made the same re-
mark to the jury in his favour. This mildness on
the judge’s part was interpreted by some as the
result of a praiseworthy scrupulosity, by others as
payment due in recognition of their talents as
informers.

The Deputy of the Public Prosecutor spoke next.
All he did was to amplify the details of the act of
accusation and then to put the question:

“Is it proven that Maurice Brotteaux, Louise
Rochemaure, Louis Longuemare, Marthe Gorcut,
known as Athena'is, Eusebe Rocher, Pierre Guyton-
Fabulet, Marcelline Descourtis, etc., etc., are guilty

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

251

of forming a conspiracy, the means whereof are
assassination, starvation, the making of forged as-
signats and false coin, the depravation of morals and
public spirit; the aim and object, civil war, the
abolition of the National representation, the re-
establishment of Royalty?”

The jurors withdrew into the chamber of delibera-
tion. They voted unanimously in the affirmative,
only excepting the cases of the afore-named Navette
and Bellier, whom the President, and following his
lead, the Public Prosecutor, had put, as it were,
in a separate class by themselves.

Gamelin stated the motives for his decision thus:

“The guilt of the accused is self-evident; the
safety of the Nation demands their chastisement,
and they ought themselves to desire their punish-
ment as the only means of expiating their crimes.”^

The President pronounced sentence in the absence
of those it concerned. In these great days, contrary
to what the law prescribed, the condemned were not
called back again to hear their judgment read, no
doubt for fear of the effects of despair on so large a
number of prisoners. A needless apprehension, so
extraordinary and so general was the submissive-
ness of the victims in those days! The Clerk of the
Court came down to the cells to read the verdict,
which was listened to with such silence and impas-
sivity as made it a common comparison to liken
the condemned of Prairial to trees marked down for
felling.

The citoyenne Rochemaure declared herself preg-
nant. A surgeon, who was likewise one of the jury,
was directed to see her. She was carried out faint-
ing to her dungeon.

“Ah!” sighed the Pere Longuemare, “these judges

252 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

and jurors are men very deserving of pity; their
state of mind is truly deplorable. They mix up
everything and confound a Barnabite with a Fran-
ciscan.”

The execution was to take place the same day at
the Barrier e du Trone-Renverse. The condemned,
their toilet completed, hair cropped and shirt cut
down at the neck, waited for the headsman, packed
like cattle in the small room separated off from the
Gaoler’s office by a glazed partition.

When presently the executioner and his men ar-
rived, Brotteaux, who was quietly reading his Lu-
cretius, put the marker at the page he had begun,
shut the book, stuffed it in the pocket of his coat, and
said to the Barnabite:

“What enrages me, Reverend Father, is that I
shall never convince you. We are going both of us
to sleep our last sleep, and I shall not be able to
twitch you by the sleeve and tell you: ‘There you
see; you have neither sensation nor consciousness
left; you are inanimate. What comes after life is
like what goes before.’”

He tried to smile; but an atrocious spasm of pain
wrung his heart and vitals, and he came near fainting.

He resumed, however:

“Father, I let you see my weakness. I love life
and I do not leave it without regret.”

“Sir,” replied the monk gently, “take heed,
you are a braver man than I, and nevertheless
death troubles you more. What does that mean, if
not that I see the light, which you do not see yet?”

“Might it not also be,” said Brotteaux, “that I
regret life because I have enjoyed it better than you,
who have made it as close a copy of death as
possible?”

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

253

“Sir/* said the Pere Longuemare, his face paling,
“this is a solemn moment. God help me! It is plain
we shall die without spiritual aid. It must be that
in other days I have received the sacraments luke-
warmly and with a thankless heart, for Heaven to
refuse me them to-day, when I have such pressing
need of them.”

The carts were waiting. The condemned were
loaded into them pell-mell, with hands tied. The
woman Rochemaure, whose pregnancy had not been
verified by the surgeon, was hoisted into one of the
tumbrils. She recovered a little of her old energy to
watch the crowd of onlookers, hoping against hope
to find rescuers amongst them. The throng was
less dense than formerly, and the excitement less
extreme. Only a few women screamed, “Death!
death!” or mocked those who were to die. The men
mostly shrugged their shoulders, looked another
way, and said nothing, whether out of prudence
or from respect of the laws.

A shudder went through the crowd when Athenais
emerged from the wicket. She looked a mere child.

She bowed her head before the monk:

“Monsieur le Cure,” she asked him, “give me
absolution.”

The Pere Longuemare gravely recited the sacra-
mental words in muttered tones; then:

“My daughter!” he added, “you have fallen into
great disorders of living; but can I offer the Lord a
heart as simple as yours? Would I were sure!”

She climbed lightly into the cart. And there,
throwing out her bosom and proudly lifting her girl-
ish head, she cried “Vive le Roi!”

She made a little sign to Brotteaux to show him
there was a vacant place beside her. Brotteaux

254 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

helped the Barnabite to get in and came and placed
himself between the monk and the simple-hearted
girl.

“Sir,” said the Pere Longuemare to the Epicurean
philosopher, “I ask you a favour; this God in whom
you do not yet believe, pray to Him for me. It is
far from sure you are not nearer to Him than I am
myself; a moment can decide this. A second, and
you may be called by the Lord to be His highly
favoured son. Sir, pray for me.”

While the wheels were grinding over the pavement
of the long Faubourg Antoine, the monk was busy,
with heart and lips, reciting the prayers of the dying.
Brotteaux’s mind was fixed on recalling the lines of
the poet of nature: Sic ubi non erimus. . . . Bound
as he was and shaken in the vile, jolting cart, he
preserved his calm and even showed a certain soli-
citude to maintain an easy posture. At his side,
Athenai's, proud to die like the Queen of France,
surveyed the crowd with haughty looks, and the old
financier, noting as a connoisseur the girl’s white
bosom, was filled with regret for the light of day.

XXV

HILE the carts, escorted by gen-
darmes, were rumbling along on their
way to the Place du Trone Renverse,
carrying to their death Brotteaux and
his “accomplices,” Lvariste sat pen-
sive on a bench in the garden of the
Tuileries. He was waiting for fflodie.
The sun, nearing its setting, shot its fiery darts
through the leafy chestnuts. At the gate of the gar-
den, Fame on her winged horse blew her everlasting
trumpet. The newspaper hawkers were bawling the
news of the great victory of Fleurus.

“Yes,” thought Gamelin, “victory is ours. We
have paid full price for it.”

He could see the beaten Generals, disconsolate

shades, trailing in the blood-stained dust of yonder
Place de la Revolution where they perished. And
he smiled proudly, reflecting that, but for the sever-
ities in which he had borne his share, the Austrian

horses would to-day be gnawing the bark of the
trees beside him.

He soliloquized:

“Life-giving terror, oh! blessed terror! Last
year at this time, our heroic defenders were beaten
and in rags, the soil of the fatherland was invaded,
two-thirds of the departments in revolt. Now our
armies, well equipped, well trained, commanded by
able generals, are taking the offensive, ready to bear
liberty through the world. Peace reigns over all the

255

256

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

territory of the Republic. . . . Life-giving terror, oh!
blessed terror! oh! saintly guillotine! Last year at
this time, the Republic was torn with factions, the
hydra of Federalism threatened to devour her. Now
a united Jacobinism spreads over the empire its
might and its wisdom. . .

Nevertheless, he was gloomy. His brow was
deeply lined, his mouth bitter. His thoughts ran:
“We used to say: To conquer or to die . We were
wrong; it is to conquer and to die we ought to say.”

He looked about him. Children were building
sand-castles. Citoyennes in their wooden chairs
under the trees were sewing or embroidering. The
passers-by, in coat and breeches of elegant cut and
strange fashion, their thoughts fixed on their busi-
ness or their pleasures, were making for home. And
Gamelin felt himself alone amongst them; he was
no compatriot, no contemporary of theirs. What
was it had happened? How came the enthusiasm
of the great years to have been succeeded by in-
difference, weariness, perhaps disgust? It was plain
to see, these people never wanted to hear the Revo-
lutionary Tribunal spoken of again and averted
their eyes from the guillotine. Grown too painful a
sight in the Place de la Revolution, it had been ban-
ished to the extremity of the Faubourg Antoine.
There even, the passage of the tumbrils was greeted
with murmurs. Voices, it was said, had been heard
to shout : “ Enough ! ”

Enough, when there were still traitors, conspira-
tors! Enough, when the Committees must be re-
formed, the Convention purged ! Enough, when
scoundrels disgraced the National representation.
Enough, when they were planning the downfall of
The Just! For, dreadful thought, but only too true!

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

257

Fouquier himself was weaving plots, and it was to
ruin Maximilien that he had sacrificed with solemn
ceremony fifty-seven victims haled to death in the
red sheet of parricides. France was giving way to
pity — and pity was a crime! Then we should have
saved her in spite of herself, and when she cried
for mercy, stopped our ears and struck! Alas! the
fates had decided otherwise; the fatherland was for
cursing its saviours. Well, let it curse, if only it may
be saved!

“It is not enough to immolate obscure victims,
aristocrats, financiers, publicists, poets, a Lavoisier,
a Roucher, an Andre Chenier. We must strike
these all-puissant malefactors who, with hands full
of gold and dripping with blood, are plotting the
ruin of the Mountain — the Fouchers, Talliens, Ro-
veres, Carriers, Bourdons. We must deliver the
State from all its enemies. If Hebert had triumphed,
the Convention was overthrown, the Republic has-
tening to the abyss; if Desmoulins and Danton had
triumphed, the Convention had lost its virtue,
ready to surrender the Republic to the aristocrats,
the money-jobbers and the Generals. If men like
Tallien and Foucher, monsters gorged with blood
and rapine, triumph, France is overwhelmed in a
welter of crime and infamy . . . Robespierre, awake;
when criminals, drunken with fury and affright,
plan your death and the death of freedom! Couthon,
Saint-Just, make haste; why tarry ye to denounce
the plots?

“Why! the old-time state, the Royal monster,
assured its empire by imprisoning every year four
hundred thousand persons, by hanging fifteen thou-
sand, by breaking three thousand on the wheel —
and the Republic still hesitates to sacrifice a few hun-

17

258

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

dred heads for its security and domination! Let us
drown in blood and save the fatherland. . .

He was buried in these thoughts when Elodie
hurried up to him, pale-faced and distraught:

“Evariste, what have you to say to me? Why
not come to the Amour peintre to the blue chamber?
Why have you made me come here?”

“To bid you an eternal farewell.”

He had lost his wits, she faltered, she could not
understand. , . .

He stopped her with a very slight movement of
the hand:

“Elodie, I cannot any more accept your love.”

She begged him to walk on further; people could
see them, overhear them, where they were.

He moved on a score of yards, and resumed, very
quietly :

j “I have made sacrifices to my country of my life
and my honour. I shall die infamous; I shall have
naught to leave you, unhappy girl, save an execrated
memory. . . . We, love? Can anyone love me
still? ... Can I love?”

She told him he was mad; that she loved him,
that she would always love him. She was ardent,
sincere; but she felt as well as he, she felt better
than he, that he was right. But she fought against
the evidence of her senses.

He went on :

“I blame myself for nothing. What I have done,
I would do again. I have made myself anathema
for my country’s sake. I am accursed. I have
put myself outside humanity; I shall never re-
enter its pale. No, the great task is not finished.
Oh! clemency, forgiveness! — Do the traitors for-
give? Are the conspirators clement? scoundrels,

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 259

parricides multiply unceasingly; they spring up
from underground, they swarm in from all our
frontiers, — young men, who would have done better
to perish with our armies, old men, children, women,
with every mark of innocence, purity, and grace.
They are offered up a sacrifice, — and more victims
are ready for the knife! ... You can see, Elodie,
I must needs renounce love, renounce all joy, all
sweetness of life, renounce life itself/’

He fell silent. Born to taste tranquil joys, Elodie
not for the first time was appalled to find, under
the tragic kisses of a lover like Evariste, her volup-
tuous transports blended with images of horror and
bloodshed; she offered no reply. To Evariste the
girl’s silence was as a draught of a bitter chalice.

“Yes, you can see, Elodie, we are on a precipice;
our deeds devour us. Our days, our hours are
years. I shall soon have lived a century. Look at
this brow! Is it a lover’s? Love! . . . ”»

“Evariste, you are mine, I will not let you go; I
will not give you back your freedom.”

She was speaking in the language of sacrifice. He
felt it; she felt it herself.

“Will you be able, Elodie, one day to bear wit-
ness that I lived faithful to my duty, that my heart
was upright and my soul unsullied, that I knew no
passion but the public good; that I was born to feel
and love? Will you say: ‘He did his duty’? But
no! You will not say it and I do not ask you to say
it. Perish my memory! My glory is in my own
heart; shame beleaguers me about. If you love me,
never speak my name; eternal silence is best.”

A child of eight or nine, trundling its hoop, ran
just then between Gamelin’s legs.

He lifted the boy suddenly in his arms:

260

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

“ Child, you will grow up free, happy, and you
will owe it to the infamous Gamelin. I am ferocious,
that you may be happy. I am cruel, that you may
be kind; I am pitiless, that to-morrow all Frenchmen
may embrace with tears of joy.”

He pressed the child to his breast.

“ Little one, when you are a man, you will owe
your happiness, your innocence to me; and, if ever
you hear my name uttered, you will execrate it.”

Then he put down the child, which ran away in
terror to cling to its mother’s skirts, who had hur-
ried up to the rescue. The young mother, who was
pretty and charming in her aristocratic grace, with
her gown of white lawn, carried off the boy with a
haughty look.

Gamelin turned his eyes on Elodie:

“I have held the child in my arms; perhaps I shall
send the mother to the guillotine,” — and he walked
away with long strides under the ordered trees.

Elodie stood a moment motionless, her eyes fixed
on the ground. Then, suddenly, she darted after
her lover, and frenzied, dishevelled, like a Maenad,
she gripped him as if to tear him in pieces and cried
in a voice choked with blood and tears:

“Well, then! me too, my beloved, send me to the
guillotine; me too, lay me under the knife!”

And, at the thought of the knife at her neck, all
her flesh melted in an ecstasy of horror and volup-
tuous transport.

XXVI

HE sun of Thermidor was setting in a
blood-red sky, while Evariste wan-
dered, gloomy and careworn, in the
Marbeuf gardens, now a National
park frequented by the Parisian idlers.
There were stalls for the sale of lemon-
ade and ices; wooden horses and
shooting-galleries were provided for the younger
patriots. Under a tree, a little Savoyard in rags,
with a black cap on his head, was making a marmot
dance to the shrill notes of his hurdy-gurdy. A man,
still young, slim-waisted, wearing a blue coat and his
hair powdered, with a big dog at his heels, stopped to
listen to the rustic music. Evariste recognized Robes-
pierre. He found him paler, thinner, his face harder
and drawn in folds of suffering. He thought to himself :

“What fatigues, how many griefs have left their
imprint on his brow! How grievous a thing it is to
work for the happiness of mankind! What are his
thoughts at this moment? Does the sound of this
mountain music perhaps distract him from the cares
of government? Is he thinking that he has made a
pact with Death and that the hour of reckoning is
coming close? Is he dreaming of a triumphant re-
turn to the Committee of Public Safety, from which
he withdrew, weary of being held in check, with
Couthon and Saint-Just, by a seditious majority?
Behind that impenetrable countenance what hopes
are seething or what fears ? ”

261

262 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

But Maximilien smiled at the lad, in a gentle,
kind voice asked him several questions about his
native valley, the humble home and parents the poor
child had left behind, tossed him a small piece of
silver and resumed his stroll. After taking a few
steps, he turned round again to call his dog; sniffing
at the marmot, it was showing its teeth at the little
creature that bristled up in defiance.

“To heel, Brount!” he called, “to heel!” — and
he plunged among the dark trees.

Gamelin, out of respect, did not interrupt his
lonely walk; but, as he gazed after the slender form
disappearing in the darkness, he mentally addressed
his hero in these impassioned words :

“I have seen thy sadness, Maximilien; I have un-
derstood thy thought. Thy melancholy, thy fatigue,
even the look of fear that stamps thy face, every-
thing says: ‘Let the reign of terror end and that
of fraternity begin! Frenchmen, be united, be vir-
tuous, be good and kind. Love ye one another. . . .’
Well then, I will second your designs; that you, in
your wisdom and goodness, may be able to put an
end to our civil discord, to our fratricidal hate, turn
the headsman into a gardener who will henceforth
cut off only the heads of cabbages and lettuces. I
will pave the way with my colleagues of the Tri-
bunal that must lead to clemency by exterminating
conspirators and traitors. We will redouble our
vigilance and our severity. No culprit shall escape
us. And when the head of the last enemy of the
Republic shall have fallen under the knife, then it
will be given thee to be merciful without commit-
ting a crime, then thou canst inaugurate the reign of
innocence and virtue in all the land, oh! father of
thy country!”

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

263

The Incorruptible was already almost out of sight.
Two men in round hats and nankeen breeches, one
of whom, a tall, lean man of a wild, unkempt as-
pect, had a blur on one eye and resembled Tallien,
met him at the corner of an avenue, looked at him
askance and passed on, pretending not to recog-
nize him. When they had gone far enough to be out
of hearing, they muttered under their breath:

“So there he goes, the King, the Pope, the God.
For he is God; and Catherine Theot is his prophet-
ess.”

“Dictator, traitor, tyrant! the race of Brutus is
not extinct.”

“Tremble, malefactor! the Tarpeian rock is near
the Capitol!”

The dog Brount ran towards the pair. They said
no more and quickened their pace.

XXVII

OBESPIERRE, awake! The hour is
come, time presses, . . . soon it will
be too late. . . .

At last, on the 8 Thermidor, in the
Convention, the Incorruptible rises,
he is going to speak. Sun of the
31st May, is this to be a second
day-spring? Gamelin waits and hopes. His mind
is made up then! Robespierre is to drag from the
benches they dishonour these legislators more
guilty than the federalists, more dangerous than
Danton. . . . No! not yet. “I cannot,” he says,
“resolve to clear away entirely the veil that hides
this mystery of iniquity.”

It is mere summer lightning that flashes harmlessly
and without striking any one of the conspirators,
terrifies all. Sixty of them at least for a fortnight
had not dared sleep in their beds. Marat’s way was
to denounce traitors by their name, to point the
finger of accusation at conspirators. The Incor-
ruptible hesitates, and from that moment he is the
accused. . . .

That evening at the Jacobins, the hall is filled to
suffocation, the corridors, the courtyard are crowded.

They are all there, loud-voiced friends and silent
enemies. Robespierre reads them the speech the
Convention had heard in affrighted silence, and the
Jacobins greet it with excited applause.

264

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 265

"It is my dying testament,” declares the orator.
"You will see me drain the hemlock undismayed.”

"I will drink it with you,” answered David.

"All, we all will!” shout the Jacobins, and sepa-
rate without deciding anything.

Evariste, while the death of The Just was prepar-
ing, slept the sleep of the Disciples in the garden of
Gethsemane. Next day, he attended the Tribunal
where two sections were sitting. That on which he
served was trying twenty-one persons implicated in
the conspiracy of the Lazare prison. The case was
still proceeding when the tidings arrived:

"The Convention, after a six-hours’ session, has
decreed Maximilien Robespierre accused, — with him
Couthon and Saint-Just; add Augustin Robespierre,
and Lebas, who have demanded to share the lot of
the accused. The five outlaws stand at the bar of the
house.”

News is brought that the President of the Section
sitting in the next court, the citoyen Dumas, has been
arrested on the bench, but that the case goes on.
Drums can be heard beating the alarm, and the
tocsin peals from the churches.

Evariste is still in his place when he is handed an
order from the Commune to proceed to the Hotel
de Ville to sit in the General Council. To the
sound of the rolling drums and clanging church bells,
he and his colleagues record their verdict; then he
hurries home to embrace his mother and snatch up
his scarf of office. The Place de Thionville is de-
serted. The Section is afraid to declare either for
or against the Convention. Wayfarers creep along
under the walls, slip down side-streets, sneak indoors.
The call of the tocsin and alarm-drums is answered
by the noise of barring shutters and bolting doors.

266

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

The citoyen Dupont senior has secreted himself in
his shop; Remade the porter is barricaded in his
lodge. Little Josephine holds Mouton tremblingly
in her arms. The widow Gamelin bemoans the
dearness of victuals, cause of all the trouble. At the
foot of the stairs Evariste encounters Elodie; she is
panting for breath and her black locks are plastered
on her hot cheek.

“I have been to look for you at the Tribunal; but
you had just left. Where are you going?”

“To the Hotel de Ville.”

“Don’t go there! It would be your ruin; Hanriot
is arrested . . . the Sections will not stir. The Sec-
tion des Piques, Robespierre’s Section, will do noth-
ing, I know it for a fact; my father belongs to it. If
you go to the Hotel de Ville, you are throwing away
your life for nothing.”

“You wish me to be a coward?”

“No! the brave thing is to be faithful to the Con-
vention and to obey the Law.”

“The law is dead when malefactors triumph.”

“Evariste, hear me; hear your Elodie; hear your
sister. Come and sit beside her and let her soothe
your angry spirit.”

He looked at her; never had she seemed so de-
sirable in his eyes; never had her voice sounded so
seductive, so persuasive in his ears.

“A couple of paces, only a couple of paces, dear
Evariste!” — and she drew him towards the raised
platform on which stood the pedestal of the over-
thrown statue. It was surrounded by benches
occupied by strollers of both sexes. A dealer in
fancy articles was offering his laces, a seller of cool-
ing drinks, his portable cistern on his back, was
tinkling his bell; little girls were showing off their

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 267

airs and graces. The parapet was lined with anglers,
standing, rod in hand, very still. The weather was
stormy, the sky overcast. Gamelin leant on the low
wall and looked down on the islet below, pointed
like the prow of a ship, listening to the wind whistling
in the tree-tops, and feeling his soul penetrated with
an infinite longing for peace and solitude.

Like a sweet echo of his thoughts, Elodie’s voice
sighed in his ear:

“Do you remember, Evariste, how, at sight of the
green fields, you wanted to be a country justice in a
village? Yes, that would be happiness/’

But above the rustling of the trees and the girl’s
voice, he could hear the tocsin and alarm-drums, the
distant tramp of horses, and rumbling of cannon
along the streets.

Two steps from them a young man, who was
talking to an elegantly attired citoyenne> remarked:

“Have you heard the latest? . . . The Opera is
installed in the Rue de la Loi.”

Meantime the news was spreading; Robespierre’s
name was spoken, but in a shuddering whisper, for
men feared him still. Women, when they heard
the muttered rumour of his fall, concealed a
smile.

Evariste Gamelin seized Elodie’s hand, but
dropped it again swiftly next moment:

“Farewell! I have involved you in my hideous
fortunes, I have blasted your life for ever. Fare-
well! I pray you may forget me!”

“Whatever you do,” she warned him, “do not go
back home to-night. Come to the Amour peintre .
Do not ring; throw a pebble at my shutters. I will
come and open the door to you myself; I will hide
you in the loft.”

268

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

“ You shall see me return triumphant, or you shall
lever see me more. Farewell !”

On nearing the Hotel de Ville, he caught the well-
remembered roar of the old great days rising to the
grey heavens. In the Place de Greve a clash of
arms, the glitter of scarfs and uniforms, Hanriot’s
cannon drawn up. He mounts the grand stairs and,
entering the Council Hall, signs the attendance
book. The Council General of the Commune, by
the unanimous voice of the 491 members present,
declares for the outlawed patriots.

The Mayor sends for the Table of the Rights of
Man, reads the clause which runs, “When the Gov-
ernment violates the Rights of the people, insurrec-
tion is for the people the most sacred and the most
indispensable of duties/’ and the first magistrate of
Paris announces that the Commune’s answer to the
Convention’s act of violence is to raise the populace
in insurrection.

The members of the Council General take oath to
die at their posts. Two municipal officers are de-
puted to go out on the Place de Greve and invite the
people to join with their magistrates in saving the
fatherland and freedom.

There is an endless looking for friends, exchanging
news, giving advice. Among these Magistrates,
artisans are the exception. The Commune assem-
bled here is such as the Jacobin purge has made it,
— judges and jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal,
artists like Beauvallet and Gamelin, householders
living on their means and college professors, cosy
citizens, well-to-do tradesmen, powdered heads, fat
paunches, and gold watch-chains, very few sabots,
striped trousers, carmagnole smocks and red caps.

These bourgeois councillors are numerous and de-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

269

termined, but, when all is said, they are pretty well
all Paris possesses of true Republicans. They stand
on guard in the city mansion-house, as on a rock of
liberty, but an ocean of indifference washes round
their refuge.

However, good news arrives. All the prisons
where the proscribed had been confined open their
doors and disgorge their prey. Augustin Robespierre,
coming from La Force, is the first to enter the Hotel
de Ville and is welcomed with acclamation.

At eight o’clock it is announced that Maximilien,
after a protracted resistance, is on his way to the
Commune. He is eagerly expected; he is coming;
he is here; a roar of triumph shakes the vault of the
old Municipal Palace.

He enters, supported by twenty arms. It is
he, the little man there, slim, spruce, in blue
coat and yellow breeches. He takes his seat; he
speaks.

At his arrival the Council orders the facade of the
Hotel de Ville to be illuminated there and then. It
is there the Republic resides. He speaks in a thin
voice, in picked phrases. He speaks lucidly, co-
piously. His hearers who have staked their lives
on his head, see the naked truth, see it to their
horror. He is a man of words, a man of committees,
a wind-bag incapable of prompt action, incompetent
to lead a Revolution.

They draw him into the Hall of Deliberation. Now
they are all there, these illustrious outlaws, — Lebas,
Saint-Just, Coiithon. Robespierre has the word. It
is midnight and past, he is still speaking. Meantime
Gamelin in the Council Hall, his bent brow pressed
against a window, looks out with a haggard eye and
sees the lamps flare and smoke in the gloom. Han-

270 THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

riot’s cannon are parked before the Hotel de Ville.
In the black Place de Greve surges an anxious
crowd, in uncertainty and suspense. At half past
twelve torches are seen turning the corner of the
Rue de la Vannerie, escorting a delegate of the Con-
vention, clad in the insignia of office, who unfolds
a paper and reads by the ruddy light the decree of
the Convention, the outlawry of the members of the
insurgent Commune, of the members of the Council
General who are its abettors and of all such citizens
as shall listen to its appeal.

Outlawry, death without trial! The mere thought
pales the cheek of the most determined. Gamelin
feels the icy sweat on his brow. He watches the
crowd hurrying with all speed from the Place. Turn-
ing his head, he finds that the Hall, packed but now
with Councillors, is almost empty. But they have
fled in vain; their signatures attest their attendance.

It is two in the morning. The Incorruptible is in
the neighbouring Hall, in deliberation with the Com-
mune and the proscribed representatives.

Gamelin casts a despairing look over the dark
Square below. By the light of the lanterns he can
see the wooden candles above the grocer’s shop
knocking together like ninepins; the street lamps
shiver and swing; a high wind has sprung up. Next
moment a deluge of rain comes down; the Place
empties entirely; such as the fear of the Convention
and its dread decree had not put to flight scatter in
terror of a wetting. Hanriot’s guns are abandoned,
and when the lightning reveals the troops of the Con-
vention debouching simultaneously from the Rue
Antoine and from the Quai, the approaches to the
Hotel de Ville are utterly deserted.

At last Maximilien has resolved to make appeal

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

271

from the decree of the Convention to his own Sec-
tion, — the Section des Piques.

The Council General sends for swords, pistols,
muskets. But now the clash of arms, the trampling
of feet and the shiver of broken glass fill the build-
ing. The troops of the Convention sweep by like an
avalanche across the Hall of Deliberation, and pour
into the Council Chamber. A shot rings out; Game-
lin sees Robespierre fall; his jaw is broken. He him-
self grasps his knife, the six-sous knife that, one day
of bitter scarcity, had cut bread for a starving
mother, the same knife that, one summer evening
at a farm at Orangis, Elodie had held in her lap, when
she cried the forfeits. He opens it, tries to plunge it
into his heart, but the blade strikes on a rib, closes
on the handle, the catch giving way, and two fingers
are badly cut. Gamelin falls, the blood pouring
from the wounds. He lies quite still, but the cold
is cruel, and he is trampled underfoot in the tur-
moil of a fearful struggle. Through the hurly-
burly he can distinctly hear the voice of the young
dragoon Henry, shouting:

“The tyrant is no more; his myrmidons are bro-
ken. The Revolution will resume its course, majes-
tic and terrible.”

Gamelin fainted.

At seven in the morning a surgeon sent by the
Convention dressed his hurts. The Convention was
full of solicitude for Robespierre’s accomplices;
it would fain not have one of them escape the guil-
lotine.

The artist, ex-juror, ex-member of the Council
General of the Commune, was borne on a litter to
the Conciergerie.

XXVIII

N THE ioth, when Evariste, after a
fevered night passed on the pallet-bed
of a dungeon, awoke with a start of
indescribable horror, Paris was smil-
ing in the sunshine in all her beauty
and immensity; new-born hope filled
the prisoners’ hearts; tradesmen were
blithely opening their shops, citizens felt themselves
richer, young men happier, women more beautiful,
for the fall of Robespierre. Only a handful of Jaco-
bins, a few Constitutional priests and a few old women
trembled to see the Government pass into the hands
of the evil-minded and corrupt. Delegates from
the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Public Prosecutor
and two judges, were on their way to the Convention
to congratulate it on having put an end to the plots.
By decree of the Assembly the scaffold was again
to be set up in the Place de la Revolution. They
wanted the wealthy, the fashionable, the pretty
women to see, without putting themselves about,
the execution of Robespierre, which was to take

place that same day. The Dictator and his accom-
plices were outlawed; it only needed their identity
to be verified by two municipal officers for the Tri-
bunal to hand them over immediately to the execu-
tioner. But a difficulty arose; the verifications could
not be made in legal form, the Commune as a body
having been put outside the pale of law. The Assem-
bly authorized identification by ordinary witnesses.

The triumvirs were haled to death, with their

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273

chief accomplices, amidst shouts of joy and fury,
imprecations, laughter and dances.

The next day Evariste, who had recovered some
strength and could almost stand on his legs, was
taken from his cell, brought before the Tribunal, and
placed on the platform where so many victims, illus-
trious or obscure, had sat in succession. Now it
groaned under the weight of seventy individuals,
the majority members of the Commune, some jurors,
like Gamelin, outlawed like him. Again he saw the
jury-bench, the seat where he had been accustomed
to loll, the place where he had terrorized unhappy
prisoners, where he had affronted the scornful eyes
of Jacques Maubel and Maurice Brotteaux, the ap-
pealing glances of the citoyenne Rochemaure, who
had got him his post as juryman and whom he had
recompensed with a sentence of death. Again he
saw, looking down on the dais where the judges sat
in three mahogany armchairs, covered in red Utrecht
velvet, the busts of Chalier and Marat and that bust
of Brutus which he had one day apostrophized.
Nothing was altered, neither the axes, the fasces, the
red caps of Liberty on the wall-paper, nor the in-
sults shouted by the tricoteuses in the galleries to
those about to die, nor yet the soul of Fouquier-
Tinville, hard-headed, painstaking, zealously turn-
ing over his murderous papers, and, in his char-
acter of perfect magistrate, sending his friends of
yesterday to the scaffold.

The citoyens Remade, tailor and door-keeper, and
Dupont senior, joiner, of the Place de Thionville,
member of the Committee of Surveillance of the Sec-
tion du Pont-Neuf, identified Gamelin (Evariste),
painter, ex-juror of the Revolutionary Tribunal, ex-
member of the Council General of the Commune.

18

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For their services they received an assignat of a
hundred sols from the funds of the Section; but,
having been neighbours and friends of the outlaw,
they found it embarrassing to meet his eye. Any-
how, it was a hot day; they were thirsty and in a
hurry to be off and drink a glass of wine.

Gamelin found difficulty in mounting the tumbril;
he had lost a great deal of blood and his wounds
pained him cruelly. The driver whipped up his
jade and the procession got under way amid a
storm of hooting.

Some women recognized Gamelin and yelled:

“Go your ways, drinker of blood! murderer at
eighteen francs a day! . . . He doesn’t laugh now;
look how pale he is, the coward!”

They were the same women who used in other
days to insult conspirators and aristocrats, extremists
and moderates, all the victims sent by Gamelin and
his colleagues to the guillotine.

The cart turned into the Quai des Morfondus,
made slowly for the Pont-Neuf and the Rue de la
Monnaie; its destination was the Place de la Revolu-
tion and Robespierre’s scaffold. The horse was
lame; every other minute the driver’s whip whistled
about its ears. The crowd of spectators, a merry,
excited crowd, delayed the progress of the escort,
fraternizing with the gendarmes, who pulled in their
horses to a walk. At the corner of the Rue Honore,
the insults were redoubled. Parties of young men,
at table in the fashionable restaurateurs’ rooms on
the mezzanine floor, ran to the windows, napkin in
hand, and howled:

“Cannibals, man-eaters, vampires!”

The cart having plunged into a heap of refuse
that had not been removed during the two days of

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275

civil disorder, the gilded youth screamed with
delight:

“The waggon’s mired. . . . Hurrah! The Jaco-
bins in the jakes!”

Gamelin was thinking, and truth seemed to dawn
on him.

“I die justly,” he reflected. “It is just we should
receive these outrages cast at the Republic, for we
should have safeguarded her against them. We have
been weak; we have been guilty of supineness. We
have betrayed the Republic. We have earned our
fate. Robespierre himself, the immaculate, the saint,
has sinned from mildness, mercifulness; his faults
are wiped out by his martyrdom. He was my exem-
plar, and I, too, have betrayed the Republic; the
Republic perishes; it is just and fair that I die with
her. I have been over sparing of blood; let my
blood flow! Let me perish! I have deserved . . .”

Such were his reflections when suddenly he caught
sight of the signboard of the Amour peintre> and
a torrent of bitter-sweet emotions swept tumul-
tuously over his heart.

The shop was shut, the sun-blinds of the three
windows on the mezzanine floor were drawn right
down. As the cart passed in front of the window of
the blue chamber, a woman’s hand, wearing a silver
ring on the ring-finger, pushed aside the edge of the
blind and threw towards Gamelin a red carnation
which his bound hands prevented him from catch-
ing, but which he adored as the token and likeness
of those red and fragrant lips that had refreshed his
mouth. His eyes filled with bursting tears, and his
whole being was still entranced with the glamour of
this farewell when he saw the bloodstained knife
rise into view in the Place de la Revolution.

XXIX

T was Nivose. Masses of floating ice
encumbered the Seine; the basins in
the Tuileries garden, the kennels, the
public fountains were frozen. The
North wind swept clouds of hoar frost
before it in the streets. A white
steam breathed from the horses’
noses, and the city folk would glance in passing at the
thermometer at the opticians’ doors. A shop-boy
was wiping the fog from the window-panes of the
Amour peintre, while curious passers-by threw a
look at the prints in vogue, — Robespierre squeezing
into a cup a heart like a pumpkin to drink the blood,
and ambitious allegorical designs with such titles
as the Tigrocracy of Robespierre; it was all hydras,
serpents, horrid monsters let loose on France by the
tyrant. Other pictures represented the Horrible
Conspiracy of Robespierre, Robespierre’s Arrest,
The Death of Robespierre.

That day, after the midday dinner, Philippe Des-
mahis walked into the Amour peintre , his portfolio
under his arm, and brought the citoyen Jean Blaise
a plate he had just finished, a stippled engraving of
the Suicide of Robespierre. The artist’s picaresque
burin had made Robespierre as hideous as possible.
The French people were not yet satiated with
all the memorials which enshrined the horror
and opprobrium felt for the man who was made
the scapegoat of all the crimes of the Revolu-

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277

tion. For all that, the printseller, who knew his
public, informed Desmahis that henceforward
he was going to give him military subjects to
engrave.

“We shall all be wanting victories and conquests,
— swords, waving plumes, triumphant generals.
Glory is to be the word. I feel it in me; my heart
beats high to hear the exploits of our valiant armies.
And when I have a feeling, it is seldom all the world
doesn’t have the same feeling at the same time.
What we want is warriors and women, Mars and
Venus.”

“Citoyen Blaise, I have still two or three draw-
ings of Gamelin’s by me, which you gave me to
engrave. Is it urgent?”

“Not a bit.”

“By-the-bye, about Gamelin; yesterday, strolling
in the Boulevard du Temple, I saw at a dealer’s, who
keeps a second-hand stall opposite the House of
Beaumarchais, all that poor devil’s canvases,
amongst the rest his Orestes and Electra. The head
of Orestes, who ’s like Gamelin, is really fine, I assure
you. . . . The head and arm are superb. . . . The
man told me he found no difficulty in getting rid of
these canvases to artists who want to paint over
them. . . . Poor Gamelin! He might have been
a genius of the first order, perhaps, if he hadn’t
taken to politics.”

“He had the soul of a criminal!” replied the
citoyen Blaise. “I unmasked him, on this very
spot, when his sanguinary instincts were’j’still held
in check. He never forgave me. . . . Oh! he was
a choice blackguard.”

“Poor fellow! he was sincere enough. It was the
fanatics were his ruin.”

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

“You don’t defend him, I presume, Desmahis!

. . There’s no defending him.”

“No, citoyen Blaise, there’s no defending him.”

The citoyen Blaise tapped the gallant Desmahis’
shoulder amicably, and observed:

“Times are changed. We can call you Bar -
baroux now the Convention is recalling the pro-
scribed. . . . Now I think of it, Desmahis, engrave
me a portrait of Charlotte Corday, will you?”

A woman, a tall, handsome brunette, enveloped
in furs, entered the shop and bestowed on the citoyen
Blaise a little discreet nod that implied intimacy.
It was Julie Gamelin; but she no longer bore that
dishonoured name, she preferred to be called the
citoyenne widow Chassagne, and wore, under her
mantle, a red tunic in honour of the red shirts of the
terror. Julie had at first felt a certain repulsion
towards Evariste’s mistress; anything that had
come near her brother was odious to her. But the
citoyenne Blaise, after Evariste’s death, had found
an asylum for the unhappy mother in the attics of
the Amour peintre . Julie had also taken refuge
there; then she had got employment again at the
fashionable milliner’s in the Rue des Lombards.
Her short hair a la victime , her aristocratic looks, her
mourning weeds had won the sympathies of the
gilded youth. Jean Blaise, whom Rose Thevenin
had pretty well thrown over, offered her his homage,
which she accepted. Still Julie was fond of wearing
men’s clothes, as in the old tragic days; she had a
fine Muscadin costume made for her and often went,
huge baton and all complete, to sup at some tavern
at Sevres or Meudon with a girl friend, a little assis-
tant in a fashion shop. Inconsolable for the loss of
the young noble whose name she bore, this masculine-

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST 279

minded Julie found the only solace to her melan-
choly in a savage rancour; every time she encoun-
tered Jacobins, she would set the passers-by on them,
crying “Death, death!” She had small leisure left
to give to her mother, who alone in her room told
her beads all day, too deeply shocked at her boy’s
tragic death to feel the grief that might have been
expected. Rose was now the constant companion
of Elodie who certainly got on amicably with her
step-mothers.

“Where is Elodie?” asked the citoyenne Chassagne.

Jean Blaise shook his head; he did not know. He
never did know; he made it a point of honour not to.

Julie had come to take her friend with her to see
Rose Thevenin at Monceaux, where the actress
lived in a little house with an English garden.

At the Conciergerie Rose Thevenin had made
the acquaintance of a big army-contractor, the citoyen
Montfort. She had been released first, by Jean
Blaise’s intervention, and had then procured the
citoyen Montfort’s pardon, who was no sooner at
liberty than he started his old trade of provisioning
the troops, to which he added speculation in build-
ing-lots in the Pepiniere quarter. The architects
Ledoux, Olivier and Wailly were erecting pretty
houses in that district, and in three months the
land had trebled in value. Montfort, since their
imprisonment together in the Luxembourg, had been
Rose Thevenin’s lover; he now gave her a little
house in the neighbourhood of Tivoli and the Rue
du Rocher, which was very expensive, — and cost
him nothing, the sale of the adjacent properties
having already repaid him several times over. Jean
JBlaise was a man of the world, so he deemed it best
to put up with what he could not hinder; he gave

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

up Mademoiselle Thevenin to Montfort without ceas-
ing to be on friendly terms with her.

Julie had not been long at the Amour peintre be-
fore Elodie came down to her in the shop, looking
like a fashion plate. Under her mantle, despite the
rigours of the season, she wore nothing but her white
frock; her face was even paler than of old, and her
figure thinner; her looks were languishing, and her
whole person breathed voluptuous invitation.

The two women set off for Rose Thevenin’s, who
was expecting them. Desmahis accompanied them;
the actress was consulting him about the decora-
tion of her new house and he was in love with Elodie,
who had by this time half made up her mind
to let him sigh no more in vain. When the party
came near Monceaux, where the victims of the
Place de la Revolution lay buried under a layer
of lime :

“It is all very well in the cold weather,” re-
marked Julie; “but in the spring the exhalations
from the ground there will poison half the town.”

Rose Thevenin received her two friends in a
drawing-room furnished a Vantique , the sofas and
arm-chairs of which were designed by David. Roman
bas-reliefs, copied in monochrome, adorned the walls
above statues, busts and candelabra of imitation
bronze. She wore a curled wig of a straw colour.
At that date wigs were all the rage; it was quite
common to include half a dozen, a dozen, a dozen
and a half in a bride’s trousseau. A gown a la Cy-
prienne moulded her body like a sheath. Throwing
a cloak over her shoulders, she led her two friends
and the engraver into the garden, which Ledoux
was laying out for her, but which as yet was a chaos
of leafless trees and plaster. She showed them.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

281

however, FingaPs grotto, a gothic chapel with a bell,
a temple, a torrent.

There, ” she said, pointing to a clump of firs,
“I should like to raise a cenotaph to the memory
of the unfortunate Brotteaux des Ilettes. I was
not indifferent to him; he was a lovable man. The
monsters slaughtered him; I bewailed his fate.
Desmahis, you shall design me an urn on a column.”

Then she added almost without a pause:

“It is heart-breaking. ... I wanted to give a
ball this week; but all the fiddles are engaged three
weeks in advance. There is dancing every night at
the citoyenne Tallien’s.”

After dinner Mademoiselle Thevenin’s carriage
took the three friends and Desmahis to the Theatre
Feydeau. All that was most elegant in Paris was
gathered in the house — the women with hair dressed
a r antique or a la victime, in very low dresses, purple
or white and spangled with gold, the men wearing
very tall black collars and the chin disappearing
in enormous white cravats.

The bill announced Phedre and the Chien du Jar -
dirtier , — The Gardener’s Dog. With one voice the
audience demanded the hymn dear to the muscadins
and the gilded youth, the Reveil du peuple y — The
Awakening of the People.

The curtain rose and a little man, short and fat,
took the stage; it was the celebrated Lays. He
sang in his fine tenor voice:

Peuple frangais , peuple defreres! . . .

Such storms of applause broke out as set the
lustres of the chandelier jingling. Then some
murmurs made themselves heard, and the voice of a
:itizen in a round hat answered from the pit with the
hymn of the Marseillaise:

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THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

A lions, enfants de la patrie. . . .

The voice was drowned by howls, and shouts were
raised:

“Down with the Terrorists! Death to the
Jacobins!”

Lays was recalled and sang a second time over the
hymn of the Thermidorians.

Peuple fran(ais, peuple de freres! . . .

In every play-house was to be seen the bust of
Marat, surmounting a column or raised on a pedestal;
at the Theatre Feydeau this bust stood on a dwarf
pillar on the “prompt” side, against the masonry-
framing in the stage.

While the orchestra was playing the Overture of
Phedre et Hippolyte , a young Muscadin, pointing his
cane at the bust, shouted :

“Down with Marat!” — and the whole house took
up the cry: “Down with Marat! Down with
Marat!”

Urgent voices rose above the uproar:

“It is a black shame that bust should still be
there!”

“The infamous Marat lords it everywhere, to our
dishonour! His busts are as many as the heads he
wanted to cut off.”

“Venomous toad!”

“Tiger!”

“Vile serpent!”

Suddenly an elegantly dressed spectator clambers
on to the edge of his box, pushes the bust, oversets
it. The plaster head falls in shivers on the musi-
cians’ heads amid . the cheers of the audience, who
spring to their feet and strike up the Reveil du
Peuple:

Peuple fran(ais, peuple de fr&res! . . .

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

283

Among the most enthusiastic singers Elodie
recognized the handsome dragoon, the little lawyer’s
clerk, Henry, her first love.

After the performance the gallant Desmahis
called a cabriolet and escorted the citoyenne Blaise
back to the Amour peintre.

In the carriage the artist took Elodie’s hand be-
tween his :

“You know, Elodie, I love you?”

“I know it, because you love all women.”

“I love them in you.”

She smiled :

“I should be assuming a heavy task, spite of the
wigs black, blonde and red, that are the rage, if I
undertook to be all women, all sorts of women, for
you.”

“Elodie, I swear. . . .”

“What! oaths, citoyen Desmahis? Either you
have a deal of simplicity, or you credit me with
overmuch.”

Desmahis had not a word to say, and she hugged
herself over the triumph of having reduced her witty
admirer to silence.

At the corner of the Rue de la Loi they heard sing-
ing and shouting and saw shadows flitting round a
brazier of live coals. It was a band of young bloods
who had just come out of the Theatre Frangais and
were burning a guy representing the Friend of the
People.

In the Rue Honore the coachman struck his cocked
hat against a burlesque effigy of Marat swinging from
the cord of a street lantern.

The fellow, heartened by the incident, turned
•ound to his fares and told them how, only last night,
the tripe-seller in the Rue Montorgueil had smeared

284

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

blood over Marat’s head, declaring: “That’s the
stuff he liked,” and how some little scamps of ten
had thrown the bust into the sewer, and how
the spectators had hit the nail on the head,
shouting:

“That’s the Pantheon for him!”

Meanwhile, from every eating-house and restaura-
teur’s voices could be heard singing:

Peuple frangais, peuple de frbres ! . . .

“Good-bye,” said Elodie, jumping out of the
cabriolet.

But Desmahis begged so hard, he was so tenderly
urgent and spoke so sweetly, that she had not the
heart to leave him at the door.

“It is late,” she said; “you must only stay an
instant.”

In the blue chamber she threw off her mantle and
appeared in her white gown a ['antique , which dis-
played all the warm fulness of her shape.

“You are cold, perhaps,” she said, “I will light
the fire; it is already laid.”

She struck the flint and put a lighted match to the
fire.

Philippe took her in his arms with the gentleness
that bespeaks strength, and she felt a strange, de-
licious thrill. She was already yielding beneath his
kisses when she snatched herself from his arms, crying:

“Let me be.”

Slowly she uncoiled her hair before the chimney-
glass; then she looked mournfully at the ring she
wore on the ring-finger of her left hand, a little silver
ring on which the face of Marat, all worn and bat-
tered, could no longer be made out. She looked
at it till the tears confused her sight, took it ofi
softly and tossed it into the flames.

THE GODS ARE ATHIRST

285

Then, her face shining with tears and smiles, trans-
figured with tenderness and passion, she threw her-
self into Philippe’s arms.

The night was far advanced when the citoyenne
Blaise opened the outer door of the flat for her lover
and whispered to him in the darkness:

“Good-bye, sweetheart! It is the hour my father
will be coming home. If you hear a noise on the
stairs, go up quick to the higher floor and don’t
come down till all danger is over of your being seen.
To have the street-door opened, give three raps on
the concierge’s window. Good-bye, my life, good-
bye, my soul!”

The last dying embers were glowing on the hearth
when Elodie, tired and happy, dropped her head
on the pillow

THE END

19